The day-to-day life of an entrepreneur involves making many decisions. And they are all important. You might have to decide whether or not to work with a new client, whether you can take on a particular project, how to choose collaborators, whether you should expand your business… Many possibilities and, sometimes, long internal debates.

We can’t give you the answers to these and other specific questions. But perhaps you’d like to know a little more about how we make decisions in business. Do you think you’re being completely rational when you choose one option over another? How much influence do feelings have? Are you truly free in your decision?

Science has studied many of our behaviors and the functioning of certain regions of our brain to try to learn more about them. Therefore, it’s interesting to see what some experts have discovered and published. Obviously, we won’t cite them all, but this small sample may be quite representative.

Daniel Kahneman

He is probably the scientist who has studied decision-making in situations of uncertainty the most. As an interesting side note, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics… despite being a psychologist! Surprisingly, the contributions of prospect theory have been key to understanding human behavior in this area.

It’s not easy to summarize his research in just a few lines; therefore, we recommend reading his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), a true bestseller. In it, he elaborates on the hypothesis that people use two systems for thinking. System 1 is faster, automatic, and intuitive. System 2 is logical, conscious, and slow, but requires more effort. Apparently, we tend to rely excessively on our System 1. Kahneman also delves into so-called cognitive biases and their role in decision-making.

Antonio Damasio

The Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has done outstanding work researching decision-making and its relationship to human emotions. His popular science work has earned him numerous awards. To understand his contributions, two of his books are essential: Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (1994) and The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (2000).   

In these essays, he explores the inseparable relationship between mind and body when making decisions: how we heed our feelings when we must choose one option over another. To illustrate this, he presents the concept of somatic markers, essential for understanding our choices in contexts of uncertainty. His hypothesis might not seem particularly surprising if we’re playing online roulette; but it becomes interesting when we consider the decisions we make in our daily professional lives.   

Richard Wiseman

He’s one of the most entertaining science communicators to read, as he tackles very everyday topics and adds countless anecdotes. But don’t let this fool you: he justifies all his theories with well-tested scientific studies. And, most importantly, he explains perfectly and clearly why he arrives at his conclusions. His book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute (2009) is particularly interesting, as is Quirkology (2007).

Wiseman’s work is very diverse and touches on all sorts of fascinating topics, often citing the work of other researchers. In the section on decision-making, he highlights how our body language can influence our mood and, therefore, our final behavior, which is closely related to the choices we make. This is the bidirectional flow of information between body and mind.

Moran Cerf

This neuroscientist, of French-Israeli origin, is a leading figure in the application of science to the world of finance and marketing. A university professor, lecturer, and regular contributor to prestigious journals, Cerf has extensively studied areas such as the neuroscience of thought and consciousness, as well as free will (the extent to which we freely make our decisions).

In his theories, he introduces the concept of brain alienation: an interesting and surprising hypothesis that has, as one of its main elements, the potential to choose the right people to surround yourself with and create what is known as electrical synchrony. To find out more, Cerf shares his publications on his website, where there is abundant information on these and other topics.