The great thing about the scientific method is this: a scientist comes up with a theory, then immediately tries to knock it down.
He (or she) will attempt to disprove, discredit and abolish his own brain child, (perhaps because he knows his colleagues will be doing this anyway, so he might as well beat them to it.)
This is a very useful thing to do in business. It’s the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ model of market research.
If you don’t adopt this kind of rigour when testing out ideas, it’s too easy to fall under the spell of your idea. Instead of knocking down the sand castle you’ve built, you’ll try and prop it up with biased supporting ‘evidence.’
Us humans are amazing at justifying ourselves and our view points. We disregard what doesn’t fit, and collect all the instances where our views are vindicated. But unless you recognise and guard against this in business, it will end up costing you. A lot.
