Over the past few centuries scientific thinking has largely increased our understanding of the world. This learning would have not been so effective without the scientific method, the recipe science uses to study reality in a systematic, replicable way. It starts with some general question based on your experience; then it forms a hypothesis that would resolve the puzzle and that also generates a testable prediction; later it gathers data to test the prediction; and finally, evaluates the hypothesis relative to other competing ones.

Despite its proven success, scientific thinking has rarely entered the worlds of politics, business, policy and marketing. Why? Science is used to deal with huge amounts of data, a deluge of information that now is also entering social sciences and changing forever how businesses decide what to do. How could the scientific method improve business decision making?

We have found at MIT Technology Review magazine a very interesting special report on scientific thinking applied to business that explores the topic. It is worth reading.