Obuda University

https://www.uni-obuda.hu/

Visual Analytics
A. Mosavi & A. Vaezipour

2015
Budapest

Book: Mosavi, A & Vaezipour, A. Visual Analytics, Obuda University, Budapest, 2015.
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1519.3369

Visual Analytics
A. Mosavi & A. Vaezipour

2015
Budapest

Book: Mosavi, A & Vaezipour, A. Visual Analytics, Obuda University, Budapest, 2015.
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1519.3369

Mosavi & Vaezipour

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VISUAL ANALYTICS

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There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the
way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the
appearance... The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a
faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has
forgotten the gift.
Albert Einstein

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Abstract
Information systems (IS) have been recently recognized to be the major tools
to be highly utilized in supporting the decision-makers in the enterprises
worldwide. However despite of all the recent advancements in developing the
rational tools of information and communication technologies (ICT) for
decision-making, e.g. decision support systems (DSS) and business
inteligence (BI), still intuition plays effective role in decision-making under
uncertainty and big data. In fact in todays globally competitive, uncertain
and dynamic business environments, understanding the concept of intuition
and systematically using it more than ever is considered to be vital in fuelling
the creativity, making fast decisions, reacting appropriately to the dynamic
market, and also governing the information technology (IT).
As the topic of intuition may be investigated from different perspectives there
has been a demand for a multidisciplinary research on the topic. While the
mechanism, success/failure ratio, marvels and flaws of intuition are still
under debate, here our revision on the latest researches on psychology and
neuroscience of creativity proves that intuition cannot be always trusted in
leading to the optimal decisions. Yet the permanent solution to creative
decision-making would be an integration of intuition and rational tools.
Further this report, a methodology is accordingly proposed in dealing with
decision-making tasks under uncertainty and big data. A case study in
engineering design is then given to evaluate the effectiveness of the
methodology.

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Furthermore along with carrying out the case studies, which have been
previously separately published, the concepts of business modelling,
requirement specification, algorithms implementation and software testing
are well practiced.

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Summary
Information systems (IS) have been recently recognized to be the major
tools to be highly utilized in supporting the decision-makers in the
enterprises worldwide. However despite of all the recent advancements in
developing the rational tools of information and communication
technologies (ICT) for decision-making, e.g. decision support systems
(DSS) and business inteligence (BI), still intuition plays effective role in
decision-making under uncertainty and big data. In fact in todays globally
competitive, uncertain and dynamic business environments, understanding
the concept of intuition and systematically using it more than ever is
considered to be vital in fuelling the creativity, making fast decisions,
reacting appropriately to the dynamic market, and also governing the
information technology (IT).
As the topic of intuition may be investigated from different perspectives
there has been a demand for a multidisciplinary research on the topic.
While the mechanism, success/failure ratio, marvels and flaws of intuition
are still under debate, here our revision on the latest researches on
psychology and neuroscience of creativity proves that intuition cannot be
always trusted in leading to the optimal decisions. Yet the permanent
solution to creative decision-making would be an integration of intuition
and rational tools. Further this report, a methodology is accordingly
proposed in dealing with decision-making tasks under uncertainty and big
data. A case study in engineering design is then given to evaluate the
effectiveness of the methodology.

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Furthermore along with carrying out the case studies, which have been
previously separately published, the concepts of business modelling,
requirement specification, algorithms implementation and software testing
are well practiced.

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Acknowledgements
This book represents a summary to the research, critical thinking and
publications of us during past two years under influence of the on-going
research at Obuda University, Debrecen University, and Jnkping
University.
We have been able to integrate our past two years research materials and
represent them in the current form. Our research is further shaped,
formulated, and documented in the current book.

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Key words
Decision-Making, Creativity, Intuition, Heuristics, Rationality, Business
Intelligence

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Contents

1 Introduction ............................................................................. 20
1.1

FURTHER RESEARCH MOTIVATION ........................................................................................ 24

1.2

LIMITATIONS.......................................................................................................................... 26

1.3

PURPOSE ................................................................................................................................ 27

1.4

BOOK OUTLINE ..................................................................................................................... 28

2 Research Method...................................................................... 30
2.1
2.1.1
2.2

DESCRIPTION OF THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEACH ............................................................. 32

Identification of the reseachs major disiplines ........................................................................... 33
DEVELOPING THE APPROACH ................................................................................................ 34

2.2.1

Primary literature review ..................................................................................................... 34

2.2.2

Former empirical researches .................................................................................................. 36

2.2.3

Description of the problem ................................................................................................... 36

2.2.4

Literature review in the particular disiplines ............................................................................ 36

2.2.5

Case studies and evidence ..................................................................................................... 37

2.2.6

Developing the approach ...................................................................................................... 37

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Literature sources .............................................................................................................. 42

RESEARCH CREDIBILITY; GENERALIZATION AND VALIDITY.................................................... 42

3 Theoretical Background ........................................................... 44

3.1

THEORY OF CREATIVITY AND INTUITION .............................................................................. 46

3.2

INTUITIVE DECISION-MAKING IN INDUSTRY; IN PARTICULAR IN ENGINEERING DESIGN......... 49

3.2.1

Engineering design ............................................................................................................. 50

3.2.2

Big data and uncertainty in engineering design .......................................................................... 52

3.2.3

The role of Intuition in engineering design ................................................................................ 55

3.3

CASE STUDY 1; WHERE NO UNCERTAINTY AND BIG DATA INVOLVED ..................................... 58

3.3.1

Description of the problem; Welded Beam Design ..................................................................... 59

3.3.2

Methodology and results ...................................................................................................... 63

3.4
3.4.1
3.5

CASE STUDY 2; WHERE UNCERTAINTY AND BIG DATA ARE INVOLVED.................................... 65

Description of the problem ................................................................................................... 66
FINAL REMARKS AND LESSONS LEARNED .............................................................................. 69

4 Decision-Making under Uncertainty ......................................... 72

4.1

DECISION-MAKING ............................................................................................................... 73

4.2

BRIEF HISTORY OF DECISION-MAKING ................................................................................. 75

4.3

SATISFICING VS OPTIMAL DECISION ...................................................................................... 79

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Case Study; Organizational Chart ........................................................................................ 82

4.4

HEURISTICS; THE INTUITIVE SOLUTIONS................................................................................ 84

4.5

THE PROBLEM WITH HEURISTICS ........................................................................................... 88

4.6

THE BRAIN............................................................................................................................. 94

4.7

NEUROSCIENE ....................................................................................................................... 97

4.8

FINAL REMARKS AND LESSONS LEARNED .............................................................................. 97

5 Neuroscience of Creativity ...................................................... 100

5.1

STUDY OF THE BRAIN ........................................................................................................... 102

5.2

BRAINS STRUCTURE ............................................................................................................. 103

5.3

THEORY OF LEFT-BRAIN/RIGHTBRAIN; INTUITIVE MIND VS. RATIONAL MIND ............... 110

5.4

BRAIN AND BUSINESS FUNCTIONS ....................................................................................... 113

5.5

UPDATED THEORY OF LATERALIZATION ............................................................................. 114

5.6

NEUROSCIENCE OF INTUITION ............................................................................................ 119

5.7

DISCUSSIONS ........................................................................................................................ 125

5.8

FINAL REMARKS AND LESSONS LEARNED ............................................................................ 127

6 Experimental setup................................................................. 130

6.1

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE PAST CHAPTERS ..................................................................... 131

6.2

DESCRIPTION OF METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................... 133

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6.3
6.3.1
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Multidimensional data Visualization .................................................................................. 135

IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................................................... 138
Description of the case study ............................................................................................... 138
CONSIDERING THE RESULTS................................................................................................. 143

7 Results ................................................................................... 146

8 Conclusion ............................................................................. 149
8.1

FUTURE RESEARCH............................................................................................................... 151

9 References .............................................................................. 154

10 Appendix.............................................................................. 178

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List of Figures
FIGURE 1: RESEARCH STAGES AND THE CORRESPONDING
CHAPTERS ................................................................................................................... 31
FIGURE 2: STAGE ONE OF THE RESEARCH; DEVELOPING THE
APPROACH .................................................................................................................. 38
FIGURE 3: RESEACH METHODOLOGY MODEL................................................... 41
FIGURE 5: THE GROWTH OF COMPUTATIONAL AND
MATHEMATICAL OPTIMIZATION RESEARCH VS. SITUATION OF
USAGE OF THESE TOOLS IN INDUSTRY SINCE 1994 (MOSAVI,
2013C). ............................................................................................................................ 56
FIGURE 6. THE WELDED BEAM DESIGN PROBLEM. ........................................ 60
FIGURE 7. DESCRIPTION OF THE WELDED BEAM DESIGN PROBLEM;
DESCRIBING THE DESIGN OBJECTIVES AND CONSTRAINTS ............. 62
FIGURE 8. TRADE-OFF SOLUTIONS, FABRICATION COST VS. END
DEFLECTION OF THE BEAM .............................................................................. 64
FIGURE 9. SIMULATION OF DRAPING PROCESS INCLUDING A
COMBINED MECHANICAL MODELING OF COMPRESSION, BEND,
STRETCH, AND SHEAR, (VAEZIPOUR AND MOSAVI, 2013C) ............... 66

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FIGURE 10. SIMULATION OF THE DRAPING PROCESS; CONSIDERING

DIFFERENT MATERIALS (MOSAVI, HOFFMANN, AND
VAEZIPOUR, 2012) .................................................................................................... 67
FIGURE 11. SIMULATION OF THE DRAPING PROCESS; CONSIDERING A
DIFFERENT PRODUCT. (VAEZIPOUR AND MOSAVI, 2013C).................. 68
FIGURE 12: THE HERBERT SIMONS GRAPH OF DECISION-MAKING
(HERBERT, 1976) ........................................................................................................ 78
FIGURE 13: THE TABLE INCLUDES THE DATASET (VAEZIPOUR &
MOSAVI, 2012A). ........................................................................................................ 83
FIGURE 14: DATA VISUALIZATION IN BI; THE ORGANIZATIONAL
CHART OF AIESEC

(VAEZIPOUR & MOSAVI, 2012A). .................... 84

FIGURE 15: THE VALUE FUNCTION THAT PASSES THROUGH THE

REFERENCE POINT; DESCRIPTION OF VALUE OF LOSSES AND
GAINS IN A DECISION. .......................................................................................... 92
FIGURE 16: THE ICEBERG OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS; A VISUAL
REPRESENTATION OF FREUD'S THEORY INDICATING THAT
MOST OF THE HUMAN MIND OPERATES UNCONSCIOUSLY; THE
YET TO BE KNOWN CAPACITY .......................................................................... 95
FIGURE 17: POSITIONS AND DIVISIONS OF CEREBRAL
HEMISPHERES, CORPUS CALLOSUM, CEREBELLUM AND
FRONTAL LOBES (ROISER ET AL., 2009) ....................................................... 106

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FIGURE 18: POSITIONS OF NEOCORTEX AND LIMBIC SYSTEM

(ROISER ET AL., 2009) ............................................................................................ 108
FIGURE 19: INTUITIVE VS. RATIONAL THINKING,
(IMAGE FROM HTTP://WWW.OLAMOLLER.COM/BLOG/) .................... 111
FIGUR20: BRAIN FUNCTIONS ACCORDING TO THE THEORY OF
LATERALIZATION (MCGILCHRIST, 2009) .................................................... 112
FIGURE 21: BRAIN AS A WHOLE WITH BOTH RATIONAL AND
INTUITION INTERACTIONS (MCGILCHRIST, 2009) ................................... 117
FIGURE 22. MULTIDIMENSIONAL VISUALIZATION, CONSIDERING
FIVE DESIGN CRITERIA SIMULTANEOUSLY ........................................... 137
FIGURE 23: SIMULATION OF DRAPING PROCESS INCLUDING
(VAEZIPOUR & MOSAVI, 2013C) ........................................................................ 140
FIGURE 24. CONSIDERING DIFFERENT MATERIALS AND
DIFFERENT DRAPING ANGLES ...................................................................... 141
FIGURE 25. DRAPING PROCESS FOR A NUMBER OF DRAPING
DEGREES (VAEZIPOUR & MOSAVI, 2013C) ................................................ 142
FIGURE 26: A SAMPLE OF VISUAL DATABASE OF DRAPING PROCESS
FOR A NUMBER OF DRAPING DEGREES. (MOSAVI, HOFFMANN &
VAEZIPOUR, 2012) .................................................................................................. 143
FIGURE 27. MULTIDIMENSIONAL VISUALIZATION GRAPH USED FOR
CONSIDERING DIFFERENT PRODUCTS, MATERIALS AND DRAPING
CHARACTERISTICS SIMULTANEOUSLY. HERE THE COST, WEIGHT,

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ENVIRONMENTAL, ELECTRICAL, AND MECHANICAL FACTORS ARE

SIMULTANEOUSLY CONSIDERED (MOSAVI, HOFFMANN &
VAEZIPOUR, 2012). ................................................................................................. 144
FIGURE 28. CONSIDERING A PARTICULAR (VAEZIPOUR & MOSAVI,
2013C) ........................................................................................................................... 145

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List of Abbreviations

IS

Information System

EIS

Executive Information System

IT

Information Technology

ICT

Information and Communication Technology

BI

Business Intelligence

MCDM

Multiple Criteria Decision-Making

RSO

Reactive Search Optimization

DSS

Decision Support System

EEG

Electroencephalography

IQ

Intelligence Quotient

AI

Artificiel Intelligence

CEO

Chief Executive Officer

EDM

Enterprise Decision Management

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1 Introduction
Creativity cannot be forced. It can only be allowed. However, much can
be done to increase the flow of creativity.
Rud, Olivia Parr (2009);
Business intelligence success factors
Decision-making is a general term associated with the choices made in
every days life (Janis & Leon, 1977; Edwards, 1954; Kahneman, 2011).
Bianchi (2009) explains that when a

decision-making task

is

mathematically described, as an optimization problem, computer science

and mathematical optimization can well contribute in finding the optimal
solution. In fact today computers have well empowered the optimization
algorithms and iterative methods so that the problems can be easier
considered. Furthermore with the aid of convenient usage of computers
even with incomplete or imperfect information or limited computation
capacity Metaheuristics, for instance, can find the acceptable solution
(Blum & Roli, 2003).
According to Jessup et al. (2003) with the involvement of computer
applications in todays every aspects of life, in a broad sense, the IS have
been recognized to be the major means to be highly utilized in supporting
decision-making in the enterprises worldwide. In this realm the DSS and
BI tools have been recognized to be the specific IS which deal with
decision-making tasks. Yet according to Proctor (2011) IT as the study,
design,

development,

application,

implementation,

support

and

management of computer-based IS has been the main contributor to the

development and expansion of rational tools of DSS and BI.

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Yet the increasing level of uncertainties in real-life problems, in some

cases, has made the decision-making tasks large-scale and very
complicated to deal with utilizing only the conventional approaches.
Nevertheless solving the decision-making tasks under uncertainties
according to e.g. Glimcher (2008), Gigerenzer (2008), and Kahneman
(2011), has been a very interesting topic of research for mathematicians,
engineers, sociologists, psychologists, economists, political scientists, and
very recently neuroscientists. Concerning the particular realm of enterprise
decision management (EDM) (Powell & Dent, 1997), according to Taylor
& Raden (2007), todays enterprises in addition to the uncertainties should
also be able to well consider large and complex databases (McAfee &
Brynjolfsson, 2012). This would make the situation even more challenging
for making right decisions in solving the large-scale problems at the hand
of enterprises.
According to Vasant & Stein (1997), very conventionally, in order to deal
with the above challenges, BI tools (Negash, 2004) as the convenient datadriven DSS (Power, 2007; Turban, 2007) have been contributing in
business decision-making. In this context rational and analytical tools of
BI would support decision-makers by providing meaningful information
and insight out of historical data. However the conventional BI tools in
dealing with complex databases and uncertainties are limited in recording,
mapping and visualizing the historical data (Negash, 2004). Therefore
often the communicated information via BI tools would still result in a
large-scale problem which cannot easily be handled by the limited
information processing capacity of the human mind (March, 1978; Battiti
& Brunato, 2011).

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According to Rud (2009) this has been one of the major reasons why the
usage of BI tools in general has not been fully promising and reliable. As
Joseph Stiglitz the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic
sciences (2001) in his Nobel lecture notes an early insight in my work on
the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability,
the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.
In fact today enterprises are using snapshots of large database to try to
understand and react to future conditions and trends (Turban, et al. 2007).
Therefore in using BI tools, as described by e.g. Andersson et al., (2008),
Turban, et al. (2007), and Negash, (2004), enterprises would need highly
trained personals in statistics, analysis, optimization, post-processing and
databases where experts have to design data extraction strategies and hand
them to programmers for the actual execution.
However Battiti & Brunato (2013) reported this process to be slow,
complicated and expensive for the uncertain and dynamic environment of
most businesses. As Rud (2009) also describes relying only on rational
approaches of conventional business DSS e.g. BI has no answer to the
complexity involved. In this situation there have been both an economic
motivation and a human pull to move beyond the rational, logical, linear
and reductionist view to a more intuitive and inventive approach to
achieve creative decisions. As in fact solving large-scale problems would
need creative alternative where BI is not reliable.
Westall (2007) provides evidence that an enterprise in order to remain
profitable and competitive must benefit from the creative decision-making.
According to Rud (2009) innovation comes from the enterprises that in
fact nurture the creative decision-making.

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Creativity in enterprises is very important as without it, products and

services become increasingly similar and the progress may become linear
and begin to flatten into a limited-growth line (Rud 2009). Yet creative
decision-making and producing innovative ideas in problem-solving, as
Moore (2005) says, would allow enterprises to differentiate and advance
exponentially. Consequently this would indeed enable smart pricing
leading to success, higher value and innovation (Rud 2009).
Schooler & Fiore (1998), and later Gigerenzer & Peter (1999) confirm that
the concept of creativity in the realm of decision-making is highly
associated with intuition. Further Gigerenzer & Reinhard (2002), and
Gigerenzer (2007) provide the facts that the success of enterprises in
todays globally competitive and dynamic business environments has been
more dependent upon intuition instead of rational tools of DSS. Gigerenzer
& Wolfgang (2011) conclude that at the presence of ever complicated
problems in the highly uncertain world, understanding the concept of
intuition and systematically using it, more than ever is considered vital in
fuelling the creativity and innovation. Consequently this research has been
inspired rather by scholars like Pascal, Rud (2009), Gigerenzer (1999),
Battiti & Brunato (2011 & 2013), and Einstien, those who seek the
permanent answer to complex-problem solving in intuition and
simple/creative methods rather than rational approaches. Obviously, as
also kahneman (2011) clarifies; intuitive-based approaches to decisionmaking may have their own marvels and flaws and may easily go wrong in
todays world of complexity, large databases and manipulative media
(Ariely, 2009; Bargh, 1996).

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As the result conducting research on intuition would indeed highly

contribute in innovation by empowering fast decisions and appropriate
reactions to the dynamic market (Gigerenzer 2008). Kahneman & Klein
(2009) strongly support further research on intuition in the situation that
the success ratio and potential of both conventional BI tools and intuition
in nurturing the creativity are not clear. Yet Kahneman & Tversky (1979)
believe that the intuitive decisions as the unknown phenomena to leaders
are still considered to be magical.

1.1 Further Research Motivation

More than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision

successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require
creativity.
IBM 2010 Global CEO Study

Luftman et al., (1999) and Seigerroth (2011) believe that in the process of
aligning IT with business and further aligning business into the global
economy considering the human factors would be essential for a successful
and beneficial transmission.

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Furthermore in the perspective of transformation and alignment, as

described by e.g. Clegg et al., (1997), Powell et al., (1997) and Hugoson et
al., (2006) effective IT governance aligns IT investments with overall
business

priorities

partly

according

to

human

and

also

his

organizational/social aspects into business. In this realm for a successful

transformation, the IT decisions should also very particularly consider the
human aspects in any IT investment including any BI software purchases
and implementation. In this context one of the most important human
aspects in any IT investment to be highly considered, nurtured and valued
is in fact the human creativity in decision-making.
Consequently understanding the concept of human creativity and most
importantly intuition is of importance in order to create a reliable and
effective decision-making structure in enterprise.
Dane, et al. (2007) & (2011) further discuss the vital role of intuition in
industrial decision-making while they also show that relying only on
intuition and ignoring the rational tools may be also harmful.
In this context therefore understanding the concept of intuition and the
mechanism of human creativity on one hand and on the other hand
identifying (and/or developing) the proper DSS tools in which can well
nurture and empower the creativity are of importance in order to create a
reliable and effective decision-making architecture in enterprise.

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1.2 Limitations
One finds limits by pushing them.
Herbert Simon
This report is concerned only with solving the large-scale decision-making
problems under uncertainty at the presence of big data where conventional
DSS e.g. BI are not the reliable tools. In such cases creative approaches
and human intuition have seen to be the potential alternatives.
Although our research on creativity and intuition provides a general
investigation on the subject, here the considered case studies are limited to
decision-making tasks in engineering design and manufacturing-related
enterprises quite similar to the firms that for instance Andersson et al.
(2008) surveyed in the Jnkping region. With applying this limitation, the
definition of creativity would be highly tied into achieving the optimal
configuration of designs. In this case the definition of creativity would
highly differ from the organizational decision-making where the creativity
is more attached to satisficing options rather optimal solutions (Simon,
1976; Simon, 1987; Simon, 1960; March & Simon, 1958; Simon, 1955).
According to the background provided above this would further limit our
research mainly into establishing a systematic balance between intuition
and BI tools in looking for novel designs.

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1.3 Purpose
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. Richard Hamming
Here we aim to solve the decision-making problems related to engineering
design particularly where uncertainty and big data are involved. To solve
the problems as such the usage of intuition is inevitable. Accordingly this
report aims to expand knowledge, insight and understanding on the subject
of intuition, creativity and their potential applications in enterprise
decision-making tasks where uncertainty and large databases are the major
challenges.
Furthermore it is aimed to benefit from the great potential of the intuition
while minimizing the drawbacks of it. For this reason the main objective
of this research has been set to reach a systematic balance between
intuition and rational tools of analytics in solving large-scale problems. In
this case the intuition as one of the main sources of creativity and insight
in enterprises, instead of being constantly ignored, is aimed to be
understood better. To doing so gathering knowledge on the mechanism of
intuition, human creativity and also practically considering a number of
real-life decision-making problems would be the other objectives to
respectively achieve.
In respect to above, the main question of our research are formulated as;

How to benefit from intuition and creativity in solving large-scale and

uncertain decision-making problems? For that matter what IS tool(s) will
be more convenient, compatible and effective to use?

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1.4 Book outline

The rest of this report is organized in seven chapters. Chapter two
describes the research method towards our research purpose and question.
Chapter three provides an extended background on the subjects of
decision-making in engineering design, uncertainty, big data, intuition,
rationality and creativity. In this chapter two case studies are given to
better demonstrate the concept of uncertainty and big data in engineering
design and the need for creativity.
Chapter four starts with a brief history and literature review to decisionmaking where decision-making under uncertainty and challenges to the
rational methods are described. In this chapter heuristics as the products of
the creative and intuitive mind are seen to be faster and more reliable in
solving demanding decision-making tasks. However they are associated
with a number of drawbacks. Chapter four further describes the problems
with intuition in decision-making under uncertainty, and accordingly
propose the solution. In this chapter it is proposed that usage of intuition in
a systematic balance with rational tools in a controlled manner can lead to
better decisions suitable for todays challenging, complicated and dynamic
market.
Chapter five alternatively investigates the creativity and intuition from
inside of the brain with the aid of recent advancement of neuroscience. In
this chapter the human brain, its structure, limitations, functions and
potentials are investigated. In this light the proposed approach that is
described in chapter four is further discussed and justified.

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Chapter six briefly presents the lessons learned in chapter three and four.
In the light of these lessons a methodology is formed in order to well
benefit from the intuition and increase the creativity. The knowledge that
is delivered in the chapter three, four and five will be utilized to consider a
real-life decision-making problem which was earlier described in chapter
three.
Chapter seven provides the results of our report and chapter eight draws a
conclusion to the overall report and points out the direction to our future
research.

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2 Research Method
This chapter presents our strategy toward answering the research question.
To doing so here it is shown that what the role of each chapter is and how
different chapters contribute and relate to each other. Furthemore the role
and contribution of each chapter toward the main purpose of the report is
separatly described.
In short our reseach methodology presents a combitation of literature
review, state of art surveys and case studies which build its basis on the
empirical data and findings achieved by former researchers in a number
different fields. Here we should note that our reseach however is a
multidisciplinary in nature. In this sense the reseach method may have
involved more complexity in implementation compairing to inflexible and
single discipline research projects.
Basically our reseach work has been divided into four main stages. Our
research stages include; developing the approach, conducting the reseach,
analysis

and

discussion,

experimental

setup,

and,

validity

and

generalization. It has been tried to benefit from the case studies in each
stage in order to fully reach the porpuse of each stage and overall research.
The first stage consists of all activities that we have been following to
develop our approach which includes a primary literature review for
identifying the research further directions. In the second stage the state of
art surveys and literature reviews in different disciplines are conducted and
the results are discussed resulting a methodology for considering largescale decision-making problems under uncertainty.

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Following the discussion provided in the second stage, an experimental

setup is provided in the third stage, where the reseach is validated. Further
in the stage four the results of our reseach are generalized for considering
similar cases. Here we should note that these stages may overlap with each
other in different chapters of this report. Following figure better describes
the four mentioned stages of our reseach and the corresponding chapters.
1st stage; developing the method; Ch1 &
Ch3.

2nd stage; state of art surveys in different

disciplines and a discussion; Ch4 & Ch5.

3rd stage; experimental setups and a

discussion; Ch6.
Evaluation of the results of Ch4 & Ch5
via a case study.

Forth stage; providing the results of

reseach and conclusion; Ch7 & Ch8.

Figure 1: Research stages and the corresponding chapters

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2.1 Description of the multidisciplinary reseach

Numerous empirical research in the field including Andersson et al. (2008)
and also IBM global study (2010) suggest that the human factors, in
particular intuition charactristics, are highly involved in decision-making.
Concequently there has been an urge for conducting a multidisciplinary
reseach. For this reason along with considering DSS and BI tools which
are often studied from only an IS perspective, the other research
disciplines i.e. sociology and psychology have been traditionaly draged
into the study (Gigerenzer, 2008; Kahneman, 2003). Yet our reseach takes
the research even further by considering the discipline of neuroscience.
Rud (2009) as one our main references to the presented research, suggests
that the the task of decision-making is considered as a complex and yet a
multidisciplinary reseach. It is true that BI tools as the convenient DSS
have been contributing in business decision-making, yet it overlaps with
data warehouses, data analytics, information systems (IS) and most
importantly human sciences.
Along with Rud (2009), the research works of Gigerenzer (2008),
Kahneman & Tversky (1979), and very prior to them Simon (1958) all
strongly suggest that the reseach on the topics related to decision-making
requires a multidisciplinary reseach method. The above mentioned
scholars along with considering the reseach on executive information
systems (EIS) (Watson & Walls, 1993) have very actively included the
reseach on sociology and psychology as the major contributor disciplines
to the research on human decision-making.

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According to Herbst (1974) a multidisciplinary reseach, as a broader

approach, is often developed to answer complex questions and model the
complicated research projects where a single discipline is unable to handle
them. Our report is classified as a complex reseach topic and consequently
demends for a multidisciplinary reseach method.
According to Younglove-Webb (1999) touching the multidisciplinary
research topics is considered as one of the toughest reseach methodologies.
Often a number of departments/teams may have to collaborate in order to
accomplish a multidisipilinary reseach. Yet each disipiline may follow a
different reseach methodology and in some points the results may be
required to be integarted. Alternatively in our reseach method the
differenet reseach disipilines have been parallelly conducted and the
results of each disipiline have been highly contributed to our goal and and
further understanding the situation and the concepts involved.
2.1.1Identification of the reseachs major disiplines
The primary literature review which is provided in chapter one and partly
in chapter three would contribute in indentifying the major disiplines of
the research for taking the proper action in the followed chapters. After
identifying the reseachs major disiplines the literature review in each
disipline come to order. In the first stage of our reseach which is concern
with developing the approach our reseachs major disiplines on intuition
are identified to be sociology and neuroscience.

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2.2 Developing the approach

According to Babbie (1990) a reliable methodology model for the research
would be the result of a well thought approach. This stage addresses the
steps toward the reseach method formulation and methodology, consisting
of literature review, state of the art surveys and conducting case studies.
Here to develope our approach the strategy consisits of literature review of
the books and papers in the broad topic of decision-making under
uncertainty considering different research disciplines.
To develope our approach a number of reseach methods in both business
and engineering studies have been well considered in order to come up
with the final approach. Ghauri (2005) presents a practical guide to the
research methods in business studies. In addition Carolyn (1999) and
Borrego, et al. (2009) provide the quantitative and qualitative research
methods in engineering. Furthermore our reseach has been widly built its
bases on the usage of case studeis. In this regard the literature of Stake
(1995) on the art of using case studies has been very influential and
constructive for the purpose of developing our approach.
2.2.1 Primary literature review
The aim of a primary literature review is to ground and motivate our work.
Attention here has been to get a general yet broader understanding of the
decision-making under uncertainty. Chapter one breifly provide our
primary literature review on the subject of decision-making and the role of
intuition. Furthermore the chapter three provides a wider view on the
problem and extensivly review the literature on the concept of modern
decision-making to the world of business, and theory of creativity and
intuition.

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Worth mentioning that in the following chapters with regards to the wide
area of decision-making, we put emphasis on engineering applications and
further restrict the scope of our literature review to the large scale
problems.
The following salient points which summarise information gathered from
the primary literature review in chapter one and partly chapter three. The
revision of the following is later used to guide the development of the
proposed approach in chapter six.
Decision-making as a general term.
Concept of modern decision-making to the world of business and
engineering.
Uncertainties in the real-life decision-making problems.
Identification of the reseachs major disiplines
Limited information processing capacity of the human mind.
Intuitive and inventive approach to achieve creative decisions.
Creative alternative solutions to large-scale problems where the DSS and
BI are not reliable.
Understanding the concept of intuition.
Theory of creativity and intuition.
The problem with intuition.

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2.2.2 Former empirical researches

Our research does not follow an empirical reseach methodology. However
our main assumption come from the former emprical reseaches in the field
including the works conducted by Andersson et al. (2008), and also IBM
global study (2010). Such emprical reseaches conclude that despite of the
advancements in IS the intuition and further human factors play vital roles
in todays decision-making tasks. Having this in mind the investigation on
the intuition and creativity would become of particular importance.
2.2.3 Description of the problem
Chapter three is partly devoted to identify the problem in decision-making.
Here the big data and uncertainty are identified to be the major problem to
be addressed. The Big data and uncertainty here are reported to be the
main reason why intuition may fail.
2.2.4 Literature review in the particular disiplines
After identifying the reseachs major disiplines the literature review in
each disipline comes to order. In the chapter three and four the major
disiplines as well as the sociological and psychological aspects of intuition
and creativity is identified to be the neuroscience of brain. The remaining
part of the chapter three and also the chapter four provide literature review
on sociological and psychological aspects of intuition and creativity with
respect to the problem with intuition and uncertainty. Chapter five in
particular provide a literature review on neuroscience of brain and the
results are discussed carefuly.

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Chapter five alternatively investigates the creativity and intuition from

inside of the brain with the aid of recent advancement of neuroscience. In
this chapter the human brain, its structure, limitations, functions and
potentials are investigated. In this light the proposed approach that is
described in chapter four is further discussed and justified.
2.2.5 Case studies and evidence
Providing the case studies in chapter three highly contribute to
underestanding the dimensions of the problem and the developement of the
approach. In Chapter three by providing two case studies in the filed of
engineering design i.e. (Mosavi, Hoffmann, and Vaezipour, 2012; Mosavi
& Vaezipour, 2012) the problem with decision-making tasks under
uncertainty and big data are clarified. In this chapter it is discussed that
where uncertainty and big data are involved the usage of intuition will be
inevitable. By providing these two case studies our approach toward our
reseach is developed wiser as the problem is seen clearer.
2.2.6 Developing the approach
In the first stage by providing a primary literature review the former
empirical researches in the field are reviewed and the the problem is well
identified and further the case studies provided a great deal of evidence on
motivation of our reseach. In this stage the literature review in the
particular disiplines is proposed and the approach is well developed. The
the following illustration would provide a better understanding of the
beneficial of the primary literature review which lead to our methodology
approach.

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Primary literature review;

Chapter one, and three

Identifying the former

empirical researches;
Setting assumptions

Providing the
case studies

Identifying the
multidisciplinary
research

Description of the
problem and
research motivation

analysing the results, learning the lessons and

developing the approach; Chapter three
Figure 2: Stage one of the research; developing the approach

By analysing the results of the primary literature review which includes a

description of the problem and research motivation, the former empirical
researches, case studies, identifying the multidisciplinary research and
assumptions the reseach method is planned.

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Concerning our reseach question the method should be able to answer both
what and how question. According to Stebbins (2001) and Verbeke &
Viaene (2000) to doing so an integrated exploratory and conclusive
research method may be utilized. Thus our method tends to benefit from a
deductive reasoning approach due to the fact that we have built our
approach on the basis of the existing knowledge (Ghauri 2005). Here by
existing knowledge we mean all information gathered from literature
review, which helps us to narrow down to specific part of the book.
Furthermore the extensive usage of case studies would empower the
conclusive part of our research.
The approach that is followed in the chapter four, five and fix is modeled
as follow. The research on creativity and intuition in decision-making
under uncertainty and big data is devided into two disciplines. The
disciplines are firsty psychology and secondly neuroscience. The literature
review then is conducted in respect to each discipline. The result of each
literature review on each reseach discipline is then separatly considered
and compaired with each other.
To be specific, in chapter four, from a psychological perspective, it is
discussed that intuition as the source of human creativity leading to
Heuristics has yet both marvel and fellows. Therefore it cannot always
lead to a logical choice and beneficial decisions (kahneman, 2011). In fact
the Prospect theory of Kahneman & Tversky, (1979) well describes that
using the intuition can sometimes lead to failure and irrationality.

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Further it is suggested that using Heuristics in a systematic balance with

rational tools in a controlled manner can lead to better decisions suitable
for todays challenging, complicated and dynamic market. At the end of
chapter four studying the brain as the source of all minds functions is
suggested as the key answer to the creativity and innovation in producing
the Heuristics (Kandel et al. 2000). Therfore for a conclusive reseach
studying the neuroscience discipline is suggested to be conducted in
chapter five. At the end the chapter four presents the leaasons learned.
Accordingly chapter five investigate the creativity and intuition from
inside the brain with the aid of recent advancement of neuroscience. Here
we try to find the truth of intuitive decision-making in the neuroscience of
the brain. However there exist different theories of brain functioning
developed by devoted scientists, and the pieces of the puzzle of creativity,
as Jung et al., (2013) would say, are not quite gathered to present a clear
picture. At the end the chapter five presents the lessons learned and with a
comparision and integration with the results of chapter four a methodology
for dealing with decision-making under uncertainty and big data is
proposed.
Chapter six follows a case study research method where by providing a
case study the results of the research provided in chapter four and five are
practicaly evaluated. The following illustration better desribes the
developed methodology and the model utilized.

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Primary literature review;

Ch1 & Ch3
Literature review
Case study
Developing the theoretical approach

Conducting the multidisciplinary research (Herbst, 1974)

Decision-making under uncertainity and big data; Ch4 (Erdem & Keane, 1996)
State of art surveys in different disciplines, Collecting case study evidence and
discussion; Ch4 & Ch5.

Intuition and creativity (Kahneman, 2011)

From psychological perspective; Ch4
Literature review
Collecting the case study evidence
Discussion and lessons learned

Intuition and creativity (Jung et al., 2013)

From neuroscientific perspective; Ch5
Literature review
Collecting the case study evidence
Discussion and lessons learned

Discussing the results and proposing the

method; Ch5 & Ch6

Experimental setup
Analysis and evaluation of the developed approach based on case study evidence
(Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2013c; Mosavi, Hoffmann & Vaezipour, 2012)

Validation and generalization stage; Ch6

Figure 3: Reseach methodology model

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2.2.7 Literature sources

Here it is worth mentioning the sources to our literature reviews.
According to Dawson (2002) and Saunders et al. (2009) in fact there are
basically two ways of getting information for a research i.e. primary and
secondary literature sources. The primary literature sources are seen as the
first hand observations and investigations. In our case this is done by
getting information from self reseach counducted. The self citation of our
previous researches in the field which have been published earlier in the
form of posters, journal articles and conference publications are considered
to be of primary literature sources.
On the other hand the secondary literature sources, as Dawson (2002)
describes, are deemed to be information that already exist from other
researchers and scientific authors. In that respect, research books, reports,
peer reviewed journal articles and websites of reliable authors and
organizations have been used to as our secondary literature sources in
different dimensions and disciplines of our research.

2.3 Research credibility; generalization and validity

According to Lee & Baskerville (2003) the credibility, including the
generalizability and validity, are the big concerns for any research. By its
very nature it refers to the external validity of the research and therefore
whether or not the work can be applied to other research settings as well.

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To increase the credibility of our research the experimental setup section

of our work aims to accommodate one of the most complicated decisionmaking problems where uncertainty and big data are highly involved.
Concequently the proposed approach can be well validated and also well
generalized to the similar class of problems in the engineering design
applications.

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3 Theoretical Background
As these trends continue and global pressures increase, the next phase
for business is one that competes on innovation. Innovation emerges from
organizations that nurture creativity. So how is that done? The first step is
to understand creativity.
Rud, Olivia Parr (2009);
Business intelligence success factors

Barnard (1968) introduced the concept of modern decision-making to the

world of business. Later Simon (1972) discussed the topic further and
particularly argued that with the dynamic nature of the modern-days
industries and businesses at the presence of complex circumstances,
uncertainties, limited time, and inadequate mental computational power
the task of decision-making is rather considered as bounded rationality.
Further, Simon (1976) suggests that people would make economically
rational decisions if only they could gather enough information. However
Simon (1976) explains that this is often not the case. According to Etzioni
(2001) the conventional rational approaches to decision-making does not
meet the needs of a world with too much information and limited time. He
further clarifies that rational decision-making requires comprehensive
knowledge of every angel of a problem, which is clearly impossible today
due to large data bases.

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On the other hand Kahneman and Tversky (1979) identify factors that
cause people to make decision against their own economic interest even at
the presence of adequate information in solving even simple problems. In
this context theorists such as Gigerenzer (1999) aimed to propose ways to
achieve acceptable decisions instead of optimal ones in solving more
complex problems. Gigerenzer & Selten (2002) encourage the decisionmakers to make a virtue of the limited time, information and knowledge by
following an approach that they call it fast and frugal reasoning which is
the approach of mastering simple heuristics. Their approach for solving
real-life decision-making problems highly relays on intuition. Alternativly
Etzioni (2001) proposes the approach of humble decision-making which is
a mixture of reliable tactics that include uncertainties, delay, hedging and
most importantly intuition. This has been mainly the reason why the
concept of intuition has become an important topic of research in todays
decision-making tasks.
However Treffinger (2004) describes that the subject of creative decisionmaking and intuition for centuries has been considered as a tabu subject to
be investigated. Although during past three decades it has become a topic
of considerable interest. Nevertheless the research on creativity and
relative investigation on rational and intuitive approaches to creative
decision-making can be pursued from very different perspective and
scenarios in different decision-making applications e.g., business, industry,
engineering, production, management, politics, leadership, organization,
administration and policy making.

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Here it is worth mentioning that our research primarily considered the

topic from almost all the possible angels and general applications, by
reviewing numerous theories of creativity and intuition from different
perspectives e.g. psychology (Sternberg, 1999; Simon et al. 1987),
sociology (Amabile 1983), organizational (Amabile, 1996; Woodman et
al., 1993; Simon 1976), cognitive behaviour (Gustafsson 2004), and so on.
Therefore the literature of our logbook exceeded more than three hundred
pages, including more than three hundred references partly reported in e.g.
(Vaezipour, 2012 & 2013a; Mosavi & Vaezipour, 2013). This made a
meaningful furthering and managing the research very complicated. In fact
because of the complexity of the subject and also because of the variety of
the manifestations and definitions of creativity and intuition in real-life,
agreement on a single theory, and carrying out the research accordingly
made impossible. Therefore narrowing the focus of the study on a single
application would be inevitable. As the result in this report the application
of intuition is mainly focused in the field to engineering design and the
role of intuition in the large-scale problems and uncertain cases.

3.1 Theory of Creativity and Intuition

According to Gigerenzer & Reinhard, (2002), Gigerenzer & Wolfgang
(2011), and Gigerenzer & Peter (1999) the concept of creativity in the
realm of decision-making is highly associated with intuitively producing
the simple alternative solutions, so called heuristics.

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Gigerenzer and his colleagues, as the pioneers in intuitive decision-making

believe that we can associate the creativity with the ability to intuitively
build simple solutions to the tough decisions. Prior to them March &
Simon (1958) yet described that human as a creature of emotion in most of
his individual and organizational decision-making plenty of feelings and
conflicting psychological factors as well as sociological factors are
involved to be well studied. Clearly this fact by far has made the
investigation on creativity complicated and rather multidisciplinary.
Furthermore a number of surveys conducted by e.g. Mansfield et al.
(1978), Isaksen et al. (1985), Albert (1990), and recently Treffinger
(2004), concluded that there is still no unified theory of creativity and
intuition accepted by the majority of researchers. In fact a number of wellknown scholars in this realm like Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, Gerd
Gigerenzer, Iain McGilchrist, and also Albert Einstein have different ideas
and theories on intuition, rationality and human creativity in problem
solving and decision-making. Consequently until today there has not been
a unified theory on creativity and intuition proposed yet.
For instance, Albert Einstein believes that the society honours rationality
more than intuition. However Simon (1991) well describes that
organizations often in complex situations because of their inability to
process and compute the expected utility of every alternative action use
intuition and simple alternatives to make decisions rather than a
rational/analytical process.

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Gigerenzer (2011) has shown such simple alternatives produced intuitively

i.e. simple heuristics, frequently lead to better decisions comparing to a
fully rational analysis as a mechanism for decision making e.g. BI. Battiti
& Brunato (2011) also agree with Gigerenzer (2007) in the sense that often
the communicated information via BI tools would still make a large-scale
problem in which cannot be easily handled by the limited information
processing capacity of human brain; the complex entity of mind (March,
1978).
While Gigerenzer (2008) insists on the potential and effectiveness of
intuition and heuristics, Kahneman (2003) however believes that intuitive
decisions and most of the associated heuristics accordingly produced, on
the basis of the Prospect theory, cannot be always reliable.
Considering the two major conflicting theories on intuition; the prospect
theory of Kahneman (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Kahneman & Klein,
2009; Kahneman, 2011) in one hand, and on the other hand the short cuts
to better decision-making of Gigerenzer and his colleagues (Gigerenzer
2008; Gigerenzer & Selten, 2002; Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011;
Gigerenzer, 1999; Gigerenzer, 2007), would obviously give the idea that
the mechanism of intuition and its failure-to-success ratio over rational
tools is still under debate and yet unclear. In the other words it is true that
intuition is fast and can often lead to creativity however the wrong
assumption and following the gut feelings on the other hand may lead the
enterprises to collapse and failure.

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Therefore conducting research on finding a systematic balance of rationalintuition in the particular applications to business and industry, and in our
case, decision-making in engineering design would be vital. This fact by
far would justify the need for conducting this research.
To sum up, according to above, there exists a number of conflicting
theories on creativity and beneficial usage of intuition. Nevertheless in
surviving from the tough decision-making situations intuition had been
long identified as a fast method of decision-making (Albert, 1990). Yet it
has its marvels and flaws, as Kahneman (2011) would describe so.
Kahneman (2011) believes that the intuitive mind is associated with
creativity with an insight which makes it very valuable in todays most
complicated

business

decision-making problems. In this context

understanding the mechanism of intuition and the creativity associated

with it in problem solving and decision-making is of importance. On the
other hand identifying the proper rational/computational tools in which can
suite, empower and nurture the intuition is also of importance.

3.2 Intuitive decision-making in industry; in

particular in engineering design
In this section we aim to narrow the attention of our study on intuition and
creativity to the potential applications of engineering design. Therefore
here in particular the decision-making tasks related to design would be
centre of our attention prior to the other applications.

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In the following after an introduction to engineering design and briefly

describing the conventional methods a case study on the usage of
Metaheuristic and Stochastic optimization is given.
Later on, the reason and the urge for utilizing intuitive decision-making in
engineering design is described. To doing so the problem with
conventional methods of optimization and decision-making, and the urge
to consider big data and uncertainty, is touched.
3.2.1 Engineering design
In order to be able to further study on the role of intuition in engineering
design, here we briefly describe the concept, importance and status of the
field of engineering design. According to Sen and Jian-Bo (1998)
engineering design is considered as a decision-making process.
Accordingly it overlaps with a number of disciplines e.g. decision
sciences, economics and management. This fact would demand that design
decisions would need a products integrated development process.
In such process the real-life industrial problems typically need to be
considered from very different perspectives. This leads to the need for
optimizing several conflicting objectives, and decision-making on several
conflicting criteria. Marler and Jasbir (2004) put it in this way that in any
task of design at least two conflicting objectives are involved i.e. Cost vs.
Quality. Further it would be the complicated task of designer to find an
optimal balance between the conflicting objectives.

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According to Korhonen (1992) with the aid of advancement of DSS,

interdisciplinary and data analysis tools, a series of criteria including
mechanical, electrical, chemical, cost, life cycle assessment and
environmental aspects are now able to be simultaneously considered. As
one of the most efficient approach, the multicriteria decision-making
(MCDM) applications (Piero, et al. 2009) can provide the ability to
formulate and systematically compare different alternatives against the
large sets of design criteria.
In this context the benefits of utilizing MCDM include that the conflicting
design objectives are taken into account simultaneously leading to an
overall insight of the problems which would deliver a significant and
competitive advantage to the engineering design community.
Deb (1999) describes that the task of solving an engineering design,
utilizing MCDM, is considered as a combined task of optimization and
decision-making. Yet as the process of MCDM is much expanded most
optimization problems in different disciplines can be classified on the basis
of it. It is very important that before the actual decision about the final
solution takes place the decision-Maker (DM) should gain a good
understanding about the trade-offs between the solution alternatives. Then
the final decision can be firmly taken.
Here it is worth mentioning that implementing the MCDM task for solving
engineering problems is considered as a very important yet complicated
approach for engineers to pursue.

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According to Miettinen (1999) the problems of this type are mostly

nonconvex, nonlinear and computationally expensive, including numerous
variables and several conflicting objectives. Yet according to Jones, et al.
(1998) solving the engineering design problems as such, which are mostly
referred to black-box optimization problems can be formulated as a
MCDM task. Huang et al. (2006), and Piero, et al. (2009) survey the
potential approaches of MCDM in engineering design. Note that often
these approaches aim to design products with the main objectives such as
low prices, high quality and minimum manufacturing time. Yet often the
problem is solved in an isolated manner.
3.2.2 Big data and uncertainty in engineering design
According to Sall (2001) engineering design and product development are
not in fact isolated processes. In fact engineering designers and
manufacturers no longer aim to, for instance, only reach low prices, high
quality and on-time delivery. These attributes, which were advantages a
decade ago, are now the minimum requirements to stay in the market. In
addition in the dynamic world of business the rules are constantly
changing. Now enterprises face globalization, more competition than ever,
and customers whose demands reflect their own knowledge and
expectations of a global market. Today, a successful enterprise must track
and move extensive inventories, generate a greater number of products,
negotiate with numerous suppliers, and maintain a multitude of quality
standards. They also have an ever-increasing need to acquire, satisfy and
retain additional customers to remain profitable. Because of these complex

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pressures, it is imperative that all links in the supply chain be managed

successfully.
The above issues would demand for the new tools in addition to
conventional approaches of MCDM in which can well deal with the big
data and the uncertainty of the dynamic market. Cohen (2009) explains
such issues quite well and to deal with the big data and uncertainty
involved he proposes the novelty and innovation in data analysis practices.
In this context with integrating DSS e.g.

BI with the design and

optimization processes dealing with the big data have become more
convenient in dealing with big data in particular. BI further provides
designers with a reporting, monitoring and alerting, and root-cause
analysis solution where it is possible to gain visibility into quality
processes. Moreover BI is widely used for pulling data together, analyzing
it and then making it available to decision-makers.
Nevertheless the convenient usage of BI, according to Battiti and Brunato
(2011), does not provide any good for the uncertainty involved. In this
context the creativity and innovation have been proposed by Battiti and
Brunato (2013) to be the right thing in todays situation in order to make
the most of decision-making resource for an optimal design. Furthermore
Rud (2009) discusses that conventional DSS e.g. BI as the rational
approach to problem solving in an enterprise can only be successful and
lead to creativity and innovation when the human factors are well
considered, implemented, and interacted within the solution procedures.
This would in fact lead to a systematic balance of rational-intuition
strategy to creativity which is highly desirable.

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Worth mentioning that in this report we dont distinguish nor aim to

survey different BI tools again. Instead we would consider the BI tools as a
whole where BI is mainly referred as a rational tool built upon analytics.
However we limit our usage from the BI tools to the common applications
of data analytics, visualization and also metaheuristics optimization which
are common in almost all BI software packages as the basic tools for
processing and reporting. Accordingly our case studies have been
conducted utilizing visualization and metaheuristics optimization to come
up with the optimal solutions. Further investigation on other tools of BI in
particular on predictive analytics and visual analytics is planned for the
future research.
There are numerous BI software packages available in the market and they
provide a very diverse list of tools including but not limited to; reporting,
online analytical, data/information processing and visualization, analytics,
metaheuristics optimization, data mining, visual analytics and very
recently predictive analytics. Thomsen & Pedersen (2005 & 2011), and
Negash (2004), have well surveyed the available BI tools in the market for
further reading.

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3.2.3 The role of Intuition in engineering design

The recent investigation of Andersson et al. (2008) on the usage of
expensive DSS implementations in engineering design and manufacturing
industries located in the Jnkping region in Sweden confirms that despite
of the availability of engineering, statistical and analytical software
packages, the intuition has a major impact in the fast and creative decisionmaking tasks of the leaders. In addition, the result of an IBM global study
in 2010, which surveyed 1,500 chief executive officers (CEO) from 60
countries and 33 industries worldwide, reveals that decision-making in the
complex situations, as well as the DSS, is highly dependent on creativity
and managerial intuition. This has been often the case when the speedy
decisions are required to be made in solving complicated problems in the
situation that the DSS lacks communicating the insight in dealing with big
data and uncertainty.
Nevertheless Andersson et al., 2008 clearly states the major and
unignorable role of intuitive decision-making in the industry and
engineering,

in

general,

despite

of

all

investments

on

DSS

implementations. As Kahneman (2011) would say this phenomenon is

quite known to psychology where managers and designers would often
hesitate to give away their power of decision-making to rational tools.
Yet very surprisingly the role of intuition, as Battiti & Brunato (2011)
describe, is not limited to the managerial decision-making and business
related tasks.

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In fact as Roy et al., (2008) also describes despite of all advancement in

computational design and mathematical optimization still trial-and-error,
and expert-based approaches to engineering design which are indeed
highly associated with the intuition and creativity, take part in decisionmaking. This phenomenon has been primarily studied by e.g. Gott (1988).
Following graph describes the growth of computational and mathematical
optimization research vs. the situation of actual usage of these tools in
industry during past two decades. Obviously the rational methods have
been dramatically increased while there have not been reported any major
growth in the usage of the rational tools in the industry of design. As the
matter of the fact the decision-makers in design and industry have been
rather relying on simple methods of trial-and-error and intuition.

Figure 4: The growth of computational and mathematical optimization

research vs. situation of usage of these tools in industry since 1994
(Mosavi, 2013c).

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This fact would strongly justify that engineering designer would often rely
on his own intuition and hesitate to give away his power of decisionmaking to rational tools (Kahneman, 2011).
According to Mosavi (2010a & 2010b & 2013a), although since past two
decades the complexity of design, due to the increasing of design criteria,
has been continuously increased, yet the continuous advancements in
analytical tools have been found to be not the permanent answer to the
most of the complexity involved. Here we can conclude that by increasing
the decision-making complexity in industry, which has been mainly due to
uncertainty and big data, the designers, as the response, tend to more rely
on the power of their intuition.
Although one may argue that; decision-making on the optimal
configuration of an engineering design is a pure rational process which has
to be conducted with only relying on mathematical and computational
tools where the human interaction is minimized. To explain this claim here
we should distinguish the two major groups of problems in engineering
design.
One group of the problems are those which the decision-making task is
rather an isolated problem. This is why it can be mathematically described
and also can be in a reasonable manner computationally implemented. In
the problems as such either the uncertainty or big data are not involved or
they are in a manageable level.
In the second group of problems we are facing with a huge deal of
uncertainty and big data in the decision-making task.

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In the problems as such due to the uncertainly and big data either the
mathematical model cannot be created or due to the large-scale of the
problem cannot be computed. In the latter group the designer with the aid
of intuition aims to overcome the complexity. Yet the success/failure ratio
of these cases are not clear. Here with providing two case studies the
situation is better described.

3.3 Case study 1; where no uncertainty and big data

involved
In this case study we briefly consider a complex decision-making problem.
Yet the case provide an isolated problem from the dynamic business world
even though the cost of the considered product is one of the criteria.
Mosavi & Vaezipour, (2012) have earlier published the full description of
this case study in the journal of applied mathematics, also it is available in
Appendix.5,

where

the

complex

decision-making

problem

is

mathematically well modeled. However the uncertainties are not the case
and big data is not involved. In the problem as such the rational methods
of decision-making are often used to find the optimal solution. In this
context computer science and mathematical optimization (Winston, 2004)
provide a variety of advanced analytical methods. The full text of our
article includes an extended review on the methods and techniques to
address the complex decision-making problems as such.
According Chaudhuri & Deb (2010) often the complex MCDM task is
considered as a combined task of optimization and decision-making where

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the problem can be mathematically well modeled. Bianchi (2009) explains

that when a decision-making task, as an optimization problem, is
mathematically modeled computer science and mathematical optimization
can well contribute in finding the optimal solution. In fact today computers
have well empowered the optimization algorithms and iterative methods so
that the problems can be easier considered. Furthermore with the aid of
convenient usage of computers even with incomplete or imperfect
information or limited computation capacity Metaheuristics, for instance,
can find the acceptable solution (Blum & Roli, 2003).
3.3.1 Description of the problem; Welded Beam Design
The problem of welded beam design (Rekliatis, 1983) is a well-known
example of some complex designs issues arising in structural engineering,
dealing with designing the form of steel beams and with connecting them
to form complex structures. This case study has been used by many
experts as a benchmark problem of MCDM. The problem of designing an
optimal welded beam consists of dimensioning a welded steel beam and
the welding length in order to minimize the cost subjected to bending
stress, constraints on shear stress, the buckling load on the bar, the end the
deflection of the beam, and side constraints. There are four design
variables i.e. h, l, t, b shown in the following figure. Structural analysis of
the welded beam leads to two nonlinear objective functions subjected to
five nonlinear and two linear inequality constraints. The objectives are: the
fabrication cost and the end deflection of the beam. In our case, the aim is
to reduce fabrication cost without causing a higher deflection. Decisionmaking on the preferred solution among the trade-offs requires the

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intelligent of the designer, to identify the minimum cost and minumum

deflection.

Figure 5. The welded beam design problem.

As it is shown in the above figure the beam is welded on another beam

carrying a certain load P. The problem is well studied as a single objective
optimization problem, yet we have transformed the original single
objective problem into a two objective problem for more flexible design.
In the original study the fabrication cost (

60

) of the joint is minimized

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with four nonlinear constraints related to normal stress, shear stress,

buckling limitations and a geometry constraint. With the following
formulation we have introduced one more objective i.e. minimization of
the end deflection ((x)) of the structure. The problem has four decision
variables presented in the optimization formulation, i.e. thickness of the
beam b, width of the beam t, length of weld l, and weld thickness h. The
overhang portion of the beam has a length of 14 in and F 6; 000 lb force
is applied at the end of the beam. The mathematical formulation of the
problem is given as;
Minimize
Minimize
Subjected to

0.125

0.

(The details of mathematical modeling of the problem in Scilab for the

further computation is available in the Appendix 6.)

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Figure 6. Description of the welded beam design problem; describing the

design objectives and constraints

Among the four constraints,

deals with the shear stress developed at the

support location of the beam which is meant to be smaller than the

allowable shear strength of the material (13,600 psi). The

guarantees

that normal stress developed at the support location of the beam is smaller

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than the allowable yield strength of the material (30,000 psi). The
makes certain that thickness of the beam is not smaller than the weld
thickness from the standpoint. The

keeps the allowable buckling load of

the beam more than the applied load P for safe design. A violation of any
of the above four constraints will make the design unacceptable.
3.3.2 Methodology and results
The proposed method which is developed on the basis of reactive search
optimization algorithms, is related to Metaheuristic and Stochastic
optimization methods. In this case study a number of potential methods of
MCDM are compared and discussed. As it was mentioned above a
decision-making problem may be modeled as an optimization problem and
the results may be communicated with the decision-maker via
visualization means. The visualization graphs which show the results of an
optimization algorithm are called the trade-off solutions. Following graph
visually presents the fabrication cost vs. end deflection of the beam. With
such graph the decision-making problem very clearly comes to the
consideration and the final decision is very confidently made.

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Figure 7. Trade-off solutions, fabrication cost vs. end deflection of the

beam

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3.4 Case Study 2; where uncertainty and big data

are involved
This case study has been published in the simulation based engineering &
science magazine (Mosavi, Hoffmann, and Vaezipour, 2012) where the
methodology has been approved and recommended to the industry by the
Europes leader and key partner in design process innovation;
ENGINSOFT. This case study is particularly planned to address the
problem of uncertainty and big data in design. Appendix.2 briefly includes
this problem. Yet the full description of the problem and the solution is
available in the chapter five. In addition Vaezipour and Mosavi (2013c)
described the problem and the solution further by evaluating alternative
designs.
Worth mentioning that the previous case study, presented rather an
isolated problem. It aimed for lowest cost for an optimal quality. However
in this case study we will introduce an engineering design problem where
the characteristics of a dynamic market are also considered. As the result
the uncertainty and big data are involved.
In the problem as such, as it was mentioned above, the conventional DSS
and MCDM tools have no answer to the complexity involved. This has
been the main reason why designers would use their intuition.

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However making decision on the basis of intuition has been reported by

Battiti and Brunato (2013) to be the reason of numerous design failures.
Therefore to benefit from the advantage of intuition and also for a
sustainable usage understanding the intuition and using it in a systematic
and controlled manner would be essential.
3.4.1 Description of the problem
This case study is concerned with designing the composite parts (Barbero
2010) and selecting the optimal materials for a particular design. To doing
so the criteria of mechanical behavior of the woven textile during the
draping and the further involved simulations and analysis are all included
in the process of the design and decision-making.

Figure 8. Simulation of draping process including a combined mechanical

modeling of compression, bend, stretch, and shear, (Vaezipour and Mosavi,
2013c)

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The manufacturing of woven reinforced composites requires a forming

stage so called draping in which the preforms take the required shapes.
The main deformation mechanisms during forming of woven reinforced
composites are compression, bend, stretch, and shear which cause changes
in orientation of the fibers. Since fiber reorientation influences the overall
performance it would be an important factor that along with the other
criteria e.g. mechanical, electrical, chemical, thermal, environmental, life
cycle and costs should taken into account.

Figure 9. Simulation of the draping process; considering different

materials (Mosavi, Hoffmann, and Vaezipour, 2012)

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Figure 10. Simulation of the draping process; considering a different

product. (Vaezipour and Mosavi, 2013c)

According to Jahan and Edwards (2013) yet the materials selection for the
composite can determine the durability, cost, manufacturability of final
products as well as customer satisfaction. For this reason a number of
materials should be simulated for a particular application and accordingly
pros and cons to be considered. For this reason the mechanical behavior of
woven textiles during the draping processes should be fully integrated to
the MCDM algorithms.
According to Edwards (2002) when multiple criteria from different
disciplines are to be satisfied in a materials selection problem, often
because of the criteria conflicts the complexities are increased.
Furthermore due to the numerous candidate materials, their detailed
properties (Appendix.4 provide a dataset sample of material properties),
and the results of draping simulations designer is facing big data. In
addition the mechanical modeling of the draping for different candidate
materials would increase the uncertainty of the design.

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The materials selection problem for textile composites creates an uncertain

and large-scale problem where the designer should consider the results of
draping for a number of materials for a number of products. To doing so
different design criteria should also come to consideration for making tfhe
final decision.
Many applications and algorithms of MCDM e.g. Jones (1994) have been
previously presented to deal with decision conflicts often seen among
design criteria in materials selection. However many drawbacks and
challenges are identified associated with the applicability on most of DSS
in this problem as described by Piero (2009) for instance.
The description of this case study demonstrates a problem in engineering
design where conventional DSS and decision-making tools due to the big
data and uncertainty cannot provide the reliable solutions. In the problem
of this kind the human creativity and intuition would be the potential
alternatives. In this regards an extended understanding about the concept
of the intuition and its mechanism would contribute in developing novel
approaches to large-scale design problems as such.

3.5 Final Remarks and Lessons Learned

In this section it was discussed that optimal decision-making in the
dynamic nature of the modern-day industries and businesses at the
presence of complex circumstances, uncertainties, limited time, and
inadequate mental computational power is considered as a large-scale and
complicated task. In this situation decision-makers are encouraged to make

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a virtue of the limited time, information and knowledge by following the

creative approaches by mastering simple heuristics and utilizing intuition.
In fact creativity in the realm of decision-making is highly associated with
intuitive producing the simple alternative solutions, so called heuristics.
Yet understanding the mechanism of intuition due to the variety of the
manifestations and definitions of creativity and intuition in real-life has
been very demanding indeed. Moreover there is still no unified theory of
creativity and intuition accepted by the majority of researchers.
In studying the particular application of intuition in engineering design it
has been seen that in fact engineering design and product development
should not be seen as the isolated processes. Today in fact engineering
designers and manufacturers no longer aim to only, for instance, reach low
prices, high quality and on-time delivery. Such design strategy which was
advantages a decade ago, are now the minimum requirements to stay in the
market. In fact in the dynamic world of business the rules are constantly
changing. Therefore due to globalization, competition, and the dynamic
customers demands enterprises face uncertainty and ever complexity of
decision-making in design.
Yet in engineering design in the uncertain cases at the presence of the big
data where the multicriteria decision-making tools and conventional DSS
are not effective, intuition is widely used. This would demand for
expanding understanding about the intuition and its beneficial usage in
decision-making under uncertainty and big data.

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The next two chapters will provide a research on the topic of creativity and
intuition. In the light of that and the lessons learned the described case
study will be considered accordingly for a creative solution.

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4 Decision-Making under Uncertainty

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to
decide.
Napoleon Bonaparte
This chapter covers the important topics of satisficing, optimal decision in
enterprise, and the prospect theory. At the end of this chapter studying the
neuroscience of brain as the source of all minds functions is suggested as
the key answer to the creativity and innovation in using intuition and
producing the heuristics.
According to Erdem & Keane (1996) due to the complexity of the choice
in todays uncertain world at the presence of the numerous decision
criteria and manipulative media (Ariely, 2009; Bargh, 1996) the rational
methods of decision-making, including analytics, probability, and logic,
have been widely challenged (Gigerenzer, 1999). Instead Heuristics as the
products of the creative and intuitive mind found to be faster and more
reliable in solving demanding decision-making tasks. In addition to the
dynamic characteristic of businesses demands for fast decisions.
In this section however it is discussed that intuition as the source of human
creativity leading to Heuristics has yet both marvel and fellows. Therefore
it cannot always lead to a logical choice and beneficial decisions
(kahneman, 2011).
In fact the Prospect theory of Kahneman & Tversky, (1979) well describes
that using the intuition can sometimes lead to failure and irrationality. Here
it is suggested that using Heuristics in a systematic balance with rational
tools in a controlled manner can lead to better decisions suitable for
todays challenging, complicated and dynamic market.
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Further this section studying the brain as the source of all minds functions
is suggested as the key answer to the creativity and innovation in
producing the Heuristics (Kandel et al. 2000). However we should note
that the problem still would be there is not a unified theory of creativity in
decision-making.

4.1 Decision-Making
Life is the sum of all your choices,
Albert Camus
We are facing with numerous decision-making tasks every day. Some of
our decisions may carry only minor significance, and some can impact
greatly on our lives. March (1985) believes that in behaving on the heat of
the moment in the uncertain world even though we try out our best, we
may make wrong decisions. In fact our brains has limited data processing
ability and also can be subliminally manipulated (Ariely, 2009), and easily
distracted from a rational choice.
Even when the choices seem to be well though decisions, Bargh (1996)
says that overall we are often wrong. The reason, as Kahneman (2011)
would say, is that people tend to frame things very narrowly. They take a
narrow view of decision-making at the time but not its consequences in the
future. And from the angle of that narrow view they consider the problem
at the hand in an isolated manner.

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In the other worlds people would deal with the problems as if it is the only
problem. However it is desirable to deal with problems as they may effect
throughout the life. Kahneman (2011) suggests that developing a
systematic approach that could be adopted for a class of problems is
essential. In this case people would be able to take a broader view resulting
to make better decisions.
The decision-making problems whether in business, industry or
engineering can be mathematically formulated to find the optimal value of
x in order to optimize a measure f(x) where x may be described as a
collection of decision variables; x = (x1; . . . ; xn). However for a wellthought decision in real-life decision-making a problem has to be analysed
from very different perspectives.
In fact in the humans daily life including his individual and/or
organizational problem-solving duties, there are typically multiple
conflicting and nonlinear criteria as well as uncertainties that need to be
evaluated in making decisions (Duncan, 1973). Furthermore today the
availability and access to data has been more than ever convenient to
enterprises. Scholars like McGilchrist (2009) and Rud (2009) believe that
due to the low cost availability of gdata storages, high-tech data
warehouses, advanced data acquisition technologies, and most importantly
expansion of social networks, there wont be any lack of data issues
anymore but the lack of tools for getting insight into the decision-making
problems to be able to react speedy, creatively and wisely to the dynamic
market. The availability and complexity of big data as such has even made
the decision-making even more complicated.

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4.2 Brief History of Decision-Making

As it was mentioned in the last chapter, in real-life decision-making a
problem has to be considered from very different perspectives. The
scientific solution into such problem has been the approach what today we
call it MCDM where multiple criteria are simultaneously analysed
(Turskis et al., 2011). In fact in the humans daily life including his
organizational problem-solving duties, there are typically multiple
conflicting and nonlinear criteria as well as uncertainties that need to be
evaluated in making decisions.
Consequently a vast number of MCDM methods, surveyed by e.g.
Henderson et al, (1993), Gandibleux et al., (2002), Marler et al. (2004),
Pohekar et al., (2004), and Figueira et al., (2005), have been developed
since 1654, to model a wide range of the decision-making problems for
instance in economics, managements, engineering, design, energy,
business, etc.
The French mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1654, in order to deal with
uncertainties in real-life decision-making problems proposed the initial
form of expected value theory. The theory of expected value could
simultaneously consider the probabilities as well as values and
consequences. The methods on the basis of the Pascals theory have been
used ever since in different problem solving realm as a rational approach.

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Expected value theory; the consequences values and probabilities are

multiplied and summed, and then the different decisions utilities are
compared for an optimal decision
It has been documented by Hanna (1964) and other historians that
Politician, Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of the United States
widely used and promoted basically the same method, yet he called it as
moral algebra. This method is well described, in details, by Gigerenzer
(1999 & 2007 & 2008). He simplifies and explains the method further as;
for coming up with a rational decision, you should make a list of all that
might happen as a result of your choosing a particular option, and then
decide how good or bad each of these possible outcomes would be
(probability).
According to Gigerenzer (1999), this has been one of the earliest ways of
rational and scientific decision-making in real-life applications. However
he further in (Gigerenzer, 2008) argues whether the inclusion of
probability theories

and

complicated

mathematical

modelling

in

calculating the decision values actually worth implementation in real-life

applications where uncertainties are way challenging.

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The theory of decision-making had been progressed over the years from
the further advances in expected value theory, and later, expected utility
theory (Mongin, 1997) starting by the works of e.g. Swiss mathematicians,
Bernoullis family; Nicholas and Daniel from the years 1713-1740 up until
now. According to Mongin (1997) in short, expected utility theory is the
theory of utility that uncertain outcomes are defined by the function
probabilities of occurrence, risks and utilities of probabilities of
occurrence.
In fact the idea of weighting and adding scheme in the expected value
theory, and later calculating the weighted average of all possible values in
expected utility theory had been highly influencing the rational and logical
thinking in modelling the decision-making problems over the years in
numerous

areas

e.g.

moral

behaviour,

motivational

behaviour,

managements, engineering design, health and life sciences. Subsequently

sometimes around and after world war II other theories and disciplines e.g.
game theory, graph theory, operational research and other analytical
methods as well as probability theory have become more popular and
further well contributed to the progressing of the rational and logical
decision-making (Buchanan & OConnell, 2006).
In the modern days the major advancements in decision-making theory
have been accomplished by the genius works of Herbert Simon, from
about 1950 up until 2001. Herbert Simon worked on artificial intelligence
(AI) and its interactions with psychology, sociology, economics, human
behaviour in organization, and also intuition (Frantz, 2003).

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Considering a definition to organizational decision, Simon (1976) states

that any decision involves a choice selected from a number of
alternatives, directed toward an organizational goal or subgoal.
Following figure describes the Herbert Simons graph of decision-making;
the three steps, pointing out the important role of AI in organizational
decision-making tasks.

Figure 11: The Herbert Simons graph of decision-making (Herbert, 1976)

According to Simon (1976) the task of rational decision-making is to

select the alternative that results in the more preferred set of all the
possible consequences. This task is divided into three required steps:
firstly the identification of all the alternatives; secondly the determination
of all the consequences resulting from each of the alternatives; and finally
the comparison of the accuracy and efficiency of each of these sets of
consequences.

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4.3 Satisficing vs Optimal Decision

The above description of Herbert Simon on rational decision-making as
logical as it may sound cannot be practical in real-life problems (March
1978). Simon (1972 & 1955) clarifies that due to uncertainties involved in
real-life situations, any organization attempting to implement such model
would be unable to fully satisfy the three requirements. Although still a
group of scientists e.g. (Russell, 1997, 2003), has a strong belief that
Simons three steps toward a rational decision can be accomplished along
with the progressing of AI.
However Shafer (2013 & 1987) and Horvitz, (1988) argued that it is
highly improbable that one could study all the alternatives, and all the
consequences relying only on AI. They conclude that AI actually cannot
be adequate and, one should therefore carry out the law of probability e.g.
Bayes' theorem to analyse the total uncertainties involved, along with
benefiting from the AI convenient tools. However doing so clearly makes
solving the task even more complicated involving complicated
mathematical modelling which expensive to compute.
According to Battiti & Brunato (2011), even though the optimization
problem can be mathematically implemented it is still impossible in most
real-world cases to calculate the optimal value of f(x). In fact due to the
dimension of problems and uncertainties in most real-world business
contexts it is extremely difficult and costly to build a function and
calculate its optimal value.

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Gigerenzer (2007 & 2008 & 2011) argued that despite of all the
advancements that AI has brought to the mathematical model
implementation of decision-making models with the ever increasing
complexity of todays decision-making problems at the presence of huge
uncertainties, multicriteria and dynamic nature of big data (subjected to
change), the conventional procedures to rational decision-making simply
cannot be the answer. With this, Gigerenzer strongly criticizes the
efficiency of the most logical and analytical-based decision-making tools
ever been produced for rationally making better choices.
Simon et al., (1987) therefore suggested that decision-making should be
considered as bounded rationality. Simon (1991) later offered a model in
which utility maximization was replaced by satisficing. According to the
bounded rationality the task of decision-making due to the complexities,
limited amount of time and the cognitive limitations of mind would rather
be seeking a satisfactory solution rather than the optimal one. Both
Kahneman (2003) and Gigerenzer (2007) proposed that the bounded
rationality as a practical model of decision-making overcomes the
limitations of the rational models including mathematical models and all
analytical approaches to decision-making. In this sense the creativity and
human intuition in building the Heuristics plays the major role (Gigerenzer
2008).
Concerning the EDM, Battiti and Burnato (2011) describe that CEOs are
not necessarily aware of the mathematical formula that their business is
optimizing. In the other words a manager may have some ideas about
objectives and trade-offs, however these objectives are not specified as a
mathematical model.

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As in fact the business objectives are highly dynamic, changing in time,

fuzzy and subjected to estimation errors and human learning processes.
According to Battiti and Burnato (2011) this would clarify the importance
of managerial gut feelings and intuition in quantitative and data-driven
decision processes.
In particular in the research on EDM the definition of satisficing is highly
involved where approaching the optimal decisions is often not the case. In
our article Enterprise decision management with the aid of advanced
business intelligence and interactive visualization tools (Vaezipour &
Mosavi, 2012a) and later in (Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2012b & 2012c) the
concept of decision-making in satisficing tasks has been well practiced
where the manager has to make fast decision as a speedy reaction to the
dynamic situations.
In the above cases the data analysis and information visualization tools of
conventional DSSs (Power, 2007; Turban, 2007), in this case BI tools
(Negash, 2004) can well contribute in modelling the problem and
describing the dimension of the problem even though the answer cannot be
an optimal one. Following case study aims to better describes that how the
data visualization of BI can empower the satisficing decision-making in
EDM-related tasks.

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4.3.1 Case Study; Organizational Chart

In this case the visualization and reporting tools of BI contribute in
providing insight into the problem (Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2012a). The
problem is considered as a large-scale problem with some missing parts of
the dataset. Furthermore due to the uncertainties the analytical models
cannot model the problem and find the optimal solution. Instead the BI
provides insight to the problem to facilitate a satisficing solution.
Here one of the usages of BI within the field of enterprise management is
visualizing the structure of an organization. It gives an overview of an
organizations relationships and data involved. It also allows focusing on
various levels in hierarchy organizational data and navigating through
layers to find out the full potential within each department.
International Association of Students in Economic and Commercial
Sciences (AIESEC) is the worlds largest student organization providing
opportunities for members to develop leadership capabilities through their
internal leadership and internship programs for profit and non-profit
organizations around the world. The focus of AIESEC is increasing the
quality of opportunities given to its members and expanding their network.
Clearly making any decision in such a huge organization would be
considered as a large scale problem with uncertainty involved. Here we are
dealing with following data;
Region: Location of AIESEC offices.
Department name: Different departments in AIESEC.
People: Number of people involves in each department.
Growth in the region: Annual growth in each region.

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Figure 12: The table includes the dataset (Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2012a).

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Figure 13: Data visualization in BI; The organizational chart of AIESEC

(Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2012a).

4.4 Heuristics; the Intuitive Solutions

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci
Gigerenzer (2011) and earlier, Simon (1976) believe that using AI,
analytics or laws of probability e.g. Bhayes theorem can be useful for
rational decision-making but only in considering simple problems at the
presence of adequate amount of data which can well describe the problem
and the uncertainties.

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However this is often not the case in todays most of the enterprise
decision-making tasks in the uncertain world. This at the first sight seems
in fact to be a huge obstacle and concrete limitation to the rational
decision-making. Fortunately on the other hand however the human being
striving for rationality and yet with his limited knowledge and shortage in
his data processing abilities, which have been well studied in e.g. (March,
1978), has been appeared to have a certain ability to develop some simple
working procedures, so called Heuristics (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011;
Gigerenzer et. al., 1999). Heuristics basically as the product of creative
minds can overcome the difficulties and complexities that we often face in
rational decision-making.
According to Kahneman (2011) there are two systems of decision-making.
Intuitive (fast) and rational (slow). Depends on what method of thinking
we select it would affect our judgment and decision-making. Intuitive
thinking, sometimes also known as associative thinking, the one leading to
Heuristics, works automatically and we dont need to decide it. In the
other words it is effortless. While the rational thinking is done by mind
under self-supervision, control and investment of efforts and perhaps
utilizing analytics. Most of the time human makes decisions based on
intuition and he follows simple Heuristics. Often relying on intuition
works just fine. This has been due to the result of practice in which makes
us good at what we do. Practice in fact makes us over confident to do the
tasks intuitively.

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Gigerenzer in gut feelings: the intelligence of the unconscious (2007),

and later in gut feelings: short cuts to better decision making (2008),
shows that heuristics are often created based on gut feelings, and the
accuracy of the method and its success rate depend on the structure of the
organization environment and the experience of the decision-maker.
According to the literature of Herberts administrative behaviour (1976),
and later Gigerenzers simple heuristics that make us smart (1999), the
heuristic is what a person or organization uses to achieve approximately
the best result in a speedy and seamless manner, and often more accurately
comparing to the complex optimization models.
The research of Gigerenzer and his colleagues describes that the heuristics
overall can be more accurate than more complex strategies even though
they process less information. In fact decision-making typically involves
heuristics because the conditions for rational models utilizing logical,
statistical and/or analytical rules cannot effectively deal with an uncertain
and dynamic world. However, developing a systematic theory of building
the effective heuristics is proposed by Gigerenzer (2011) as the major
challenge for the future research. He further clarifies that for now we know
something for certain that with sufficient experience, human can learn to
select proper heuristics from his adaptive decision-making toolbox e.g. BI
tools.
Simon (1976) believes that creativity in building heuristics is a worthy
occurrence of human mind which one can bring to an enterprise. Yet it is a
nonlinear, unexpected and intuitive approach and hard to actually be
planned in IT projects for instance in the business/IT alignment.
Furthermore it clearly cannot be produced by increasing the IT usage.

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However, as it is discussed later in this report that it can be further directed

and empowered in a balanced and informed form with BI applications.
The procedures of producing the heuristics as the efficient cognitive
processes consist in assuming that the decision-making task can be isolated
from the rest of the world including a limited number of variables and a
limited range of consequences and therefore uncertainties by ignoring
some parts of the information (Gigerenzer, 1999). Creating heuristics is
considered as a valuable approach and a creative accomplishment in any
organization. It is worth mentioning that in an organization indeed
experience of employees whether consciously or unconsciously plays an
important role in being creative to produce heuristics methods (Simon
1976).
Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2011) reviewed studies on decisions by
individuals and institutions, including business, medical, and legal
decision-making, showing that heuristics have been often reported to be
more accurate and reliable than complex rational strategies utilizing AI,
probability theory and/or analytics. In this sense they confidently announce
heuristics as a rational method which is a creative product of human mind.
Gigerenzer (2007) includes the heuristics as one of the major approaches
to modelling decision-making problems along with logic and analytics.
Although each of these approaches is suited to a particular kind of
problem; heuristics have not been treated equally. In fact in rational
problem solving the heuristics have been often associated with errors,
while logical and analytical rules are understood to define rational thinking
in the major situations (Gigerenzer, 2008).

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This would clearly contradict the fact that huge amount of decisionmaking tasks in enterprises today are often done using heuristics, intuition
and on the gut feeling, whether consciously or unconsciously (Andersson
et al., 2008).

4.5 The Problem with Heuristics

Tversky & Kahneman, 1979 mentions that the human mind in fact has
both capacities for sequential and simultaneous functioning of thoughts.
Simultaneous functioning provides the ability to interpret information
simultaneously which enables people to make sense of very complex
situations. Consequently in the uncertain world where complexity is
involved the human intuitive mind can come up with simple solutions of
heuristics, in a speedy manner (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2002). This is why
the magic has been often associated with intuition when everything is
worked out according to the plan. However Kahneman (2011) very
strongly state that intuition is the result of regularity, there is no magic
involved, and intuition is not always the best solution even though it may
have its uses.
As Gigerenzer (2007 & 2011) clarifies with sufficient experience, human
can learn to create proper heuristics from his adaptive decision-making
toolbox e.g. BI tools. This has been due the result of practice in which
makes human good at what he does. Practice in fact makes us over
confident to do the tasks intuitively. In the situations that there are
regularities with minimum uncertainty practice can work wonder and the
intuitive decisions which are made that way can be highly reliable
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1979).

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According to Kahneman (2003) people are good in intuition and do a lot

with it. Considering an examples by Kahneman (2011); British male upper
class says I have large tattoos all over my back. In third of a second the
brain reacts with the surprise. In fact a huge amount of information has to
be processed in third of the second to come up with surprise. A chess
player recognizes a chess situation so fast. And you can easily find out
your partners mood first word on the phone. To be master in such
situation it would need a lot of practice within an environment of
regularity. Such abilities of mind are extraordinary and hard to explain.
However for now we know that learning to read, playing chess and
diagnosing the patients by medical experts are the tasks that because of the
regularity the situations are recognizable and then people can intuitively
work upon them to come up with fast decision upon creative heuristics
(Kahneman & Klein, 2009).
However heuristics cannot be always accurate. Here we name a number of
reasons why:
Irregularity and high uncertainty;

Kahneman (2003) believes that

decision-making in the highly uncertain situations e.g., picking up a

particular stock in the stock market, where there is no regularity to learn
and practice upon, intuition has no place to count on. He further suggests
that in the situations that there is no regularity, instead of intuition the
analytical algorithms and computation tools for prediction, calculation of
probability and decision-making would be more reliable. In this sense
working upon information and using metaherustics algorithms would be
the better rational approach (Kahneman, 2011).

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As the result of Kahneman and his colleagues study it is concluded period

that dealing with complicated problems where lots of uncertainty are
involved with no regularity intuition cannot work properly.
Media and environmental manipulation; the subliminal stimuli in this
case might be visual stimuli, emotion eliciting stimuli, and auditory
stimuli. Ariely (2009), Iyengar (2010), Iyengar & Lepper (1999) and
Johansson et al., (2008) argue on the importance, misleading and
manipulating process of choosing and decision-making in respect to selfsatisfaction. In their experiments the cultural background of individuals
has reported to be highly influential in the decision-making ability.
Prospect theory; in study of intuition to show that the intuition is not
always accurate and therefore unreliable, Kahneman & Tversky (1979)
invented some problems that they knew the answers yet intuitively people
had in fact opposite answers. To doing so people were asked to predict the
probability of some events say hitting the floods or earthquakes. For
instance they asked two different groups to predict the probability of one
of the following events; 1: hitting a flood in a city in US that would accrue
and kill 1000 people within next 10 years, 2: hitting an earthquake in a
particular city of US, say California, what would cause a flood and could
kill 1000 people within next 10 years. Obviously the second event is less
probable yet people intuitively found the second event more probable.

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In another case people were asked that how much they would pay for their
travel insurance policy in two different cases; 1: in the case of death for
any reason, 2: in the case of death in a terrorist attack. Obviously the first
scenario would cover the second one. However people were willing to pay
way more in the case of death in a terrorist attack. This means that people
are more afraid of dying in terrorist attack than dying. They conclude that
intuition comes from the fear. This is why the decisions upon intuition
cannot be fully reliable.
Intuitive decisions would follow the Prospect theory (Kahneman &
Tversky, 1979) which can explain many of our irrational decisions (Roiser
et al., 2009). Prospect theory is considered as a behavioural economic
theory that describes the way people make decision among probabilistic
alternatives that involve risk and uncertainty.
The theory describes the decision processes in two stages: editing and
evaluation. The heuristics are in fact considered to be the outcomes the
decision in editing stags. Further people decide which outcomes they
consider equivalent, set a reference point and then consider lesser
outcomes as losses and greater ones as gains. Following graph better
describes the losses and gains in a decision. According to the graph the
value function that passes through the reference point has an S-shaped and
is asymmetrical. Losses hurt more than gains feel good. This would differ
greatly from expected utility theory, in which a rational agent is indifferent
to the reference point.

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Figure 14: The value function that passes through the reference point;
description of value of losses and gains in a decision.
Following formula describes the evaluation stage of Prospect theory that
Kahneman and Tversky (1979) assume.

In this formula U is the expected utility of the outcomes to the individual

making the decision, x1, x2, . . . , xn are the potential outcomes and p1, p2, .
. . , pn are their respective probabilities, and v is value function that
assigns a value to an outcome.

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According to Prospect theory people simply because of fear associated

with the perception of lost or gain, may choose to risk or play safe (De
Martino et al., 2006). In fact people make decision more rationally in the
situation of gain and may make decision more aggressively in the situation
of fear and lost. According to Prospect theory even making the simplest
choices could be in fact a tricky process.
As the result, for the sake of avoiding and minimizing the mistakes in
decision-making the usage of intuition and heuristics should be done in a
balanced form with rational tool to benefit from the both. However finding
a balance between intuition and rationality is still hard and very
complicated to accomplish. Although today there exists a few numbers of
firms that have established a systematic way of optimizing decisions via a
proper mix of intuition and rationality with in fact promising results
(Kahneman, 2011).
Here however we should note that although there have been always lots of
interests in improving the quality of rationality in enterprise decisionmaking to better implement rationality in organizations it would certainly
need fundamental changes in architecture of the organizations. There is
actually massive resistance in organizations to implement programs that
can improve the rationality of their decisions. This resistance has been
logical mainly due to the difficulties that such programs may bring to the
leadership positions. In fact leaders like to be in charge of their decisions
and yet replacing people with a structured system of decision-making
would be something for them to strongly hesitate. In this sense it is
believed that the tool should be at the service of the leaders and work
interactively with them.

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4.6 The Brain

Companies are so keen on benefiting from the creative minds of their
employees who generate such short cuts that potential employees may be
encouraged to walk in the woods, listening to their favourite music, having
flexible working hours and comforting themselves in their workplaces in
order to get more inspiration (Rud, 2009). This is actually called mind
wandering and as it is discussed in the next section neuroscientists believe
that it is highly connected to creativity. Yet as Kandel (2007) argues we
are at a very early stage in understanding the creativity and other higher
mental processes, and certainly due to the technological advancements of
this era one can get a very good insights into the situations that may lead to
increased creativity. To figure out the origins of creativity in organizations
or creativity as an individual occurrence the topic has long been
considered both from a social, psychological and very recently from a
neuroscientific point of view.
Considering the beliefs of Kandel et al. (2000) and Freud (1931) that
human makes a lot of decisions by unconscious evaluations makes the
situation even more interesting to explore further. Kandel et al. (2000)
provide concrete reasons e.g., Libet (1993)s experiments on free will and
unconscious decision, to prove that human is not consciously aware of
most of his decisions.
Further evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena may include
repressed feelings, visual memories, automatic skills, subliminal
perceptions, thoughts, habits, and automatic reactions (Westen, 1999). The
unconscious mind consists of the processes in the mind that occurs
automatically without introspection.

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In fact in every days life there are lots of decisions that are made
unconsciously than consciously (Freud, 1931). Now we know that human
makes a lot of decisions by unconscious evaluations (Kandel et al., 2000).

Figure 15: The iceberg of unconsciousness; a visual representation of

Freud's theory indicating that most of the human mind operates
unconsciously; the yet to be known capacity
On the other hand conscious decision-making can function well when one
is dealing only with a very limited number of fixed alternatives as it would
be possible to focus consciously very effectively on one thing at a time
using some rational approaches e.g. moral algebra (explained in
Gigerenzer, 1999). Yet at the presence of multiple options, relying on
unconscious mind is very likely to be creative and effective (Kandel et al.
2000).

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Herbert (1960, 1958, 1972, 1987, 1955) had well studied the concept of
unconsciousness and creativity in human organizational behavior and
decision-making from the psychological and sociological point of view.
According to Herberts and the earlier works of Barnard (1938), the
creativity of an individual in an organization could be highly affected by
the goals and environments of that organization. They further argue that
personal choices may be determined whether an individual joins a
particular organization. As a member of an organization, an individual
makes decisions not in relationship to personal needs, but in an impersonal
sense as part of the organizational goals. And ones experience in an
organization using a proper tool can bring him a learning and creativity
ability to create heuristics (Gigerenzer, 2001).
Along with psychological and sociological factors involved in human
creativity in organizations, on the other hand, the anatomical structure and
functioning aspects of the brain are also identified as one of the major
effective success factors to implementing any BI alignment project (Rud
2009). To draw attention to the importance of study on the function of the
brain worth mentioning that Kandel et al. (2000) in the book principles of
neural science argue that all mental functions, including conscious and
unconscious decision, whether a creative heuristic or a logical approach,
come from the brain. In this sense studying the structure, function, ability
and processing quality of the brain plays an important role in investigation
of the creative thinking and problem solving.

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4.7 Neurosciene
Recently due to the advancements of the neuroscience and availability of
the tools to actually study the function and the structure of brain, the
concept of creativity has been also become subjected to investigation from
the neuroscientific perspective. This would provide the ability to
investigate the creativity from inside of the brain; the entity that originate
all mental functions including creativity in decision-making (Kandel et al.
2000). Very similarly in this realm also there are different theories of brain
functioning developed by devoted scientists. Yet the pieces of the puzel of
creativity are not quite gathered to present a clear picture (Jung et al.
2013).
Overall an independent investigation on creativity from the neuroscientific
point of view would contribute in confidently choosing the proper
psychological theory of creativity. It would further increase the
understanding and knowledge on the true potentials and drawbacks of the
intuitive decision-making.

4.8 Final Remarks and Lessons Learned

Considering the history of decision-making provided for instance by
Buchanan & OConnell (2006) would strongly support the idea that
relying only on rational approaches of conventional DSS (Power, 2007;
Turban, 2007) and BI (Negash, 2004) had no answer to complexity
involved. Yet there has been always simple solution around associated
with intuition (Rud 2009).

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We discussed in this chapter that the intuitive mind is associated with

creativity with an insight which makes it very valuable in todays most
complicated business problems. In fact in business and industry, whether
production, life sciences, energy, engineering, design, or fashion industry,
there are tough and rather complicated decisions which are highly
dependent on managerial intuition.
However the research of Gigerenzer and his colleagues supports the idea
that intuition in large-scale and uncertain cases can be effective and
efficient. On the other hand Kahneman (2011) points out the drawbacks of
intuition which are associated in intuitive decision-making. In fact when
the human emotions e.g. fear of gain and lost, are highly involved in the
decision-making task the result might not be desirable or close to optimal.
Yet regularity and practice on utilizing a data analysis tool box e.g. BI
while the gain and the loss of the decision-maker is not involved would
result in better decisions.
With having the above facts in mind in order to benefit from the intuition
in solving large-scale problems under uncertainty it would be essential yet
adequate taking into consideration the enemies of intuition which are
irregularity, absence of proactive and emotional decision-making. In this
sense practicing and mastering one of the conventional DSS tools and
regularity in dealing with similar case would lead to better decision.
Here we can conclude that the permanent solution to creative problemsolving is neither intuition nor rationality but a fine systematic balance and
combination of these two.

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In the next chapter we will provide a research on creativity and intuition

yet this time from neuroscience point of view. With this we aim to
understand the concept of creativity better.

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5 Neuroscience of Creativity
Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner
so you can gain insight into your own behaviour.
Henepola Gunaratana

According to Christoff (2009) in studying the creativity the concept of

intuition, depending on the task at hand and the theory of interest, may be
initiated, sourced and named after different operational mechanism of
mind e.g. ability to create heuristics (Gigerenzer, 1999), insight (Limb et
al., 2008), divergent thinking (Gilhooly et al., 2007), aha moment
(Bowden, 1997) and/or precognition (Radin, 1997; Radin, 1988). Although
here we will touch these definitions, for the sake of simplicity of the report
we would consider them as a single mechanism to be referred as intuition.
As we discussed in the last chapters in decision-making realm the concept
of creativity is highly associated with producing the heuristics. Yet the
subject of creativity for centuries has been considered as a tabu subject to
be investigated. However during past three decades it has become a topic
of considerable interest (Treffinger 2004).
Psychological researchers have been in fact pioneers in examining the
creative

thinking

and

creative

problem

solving

programs

and

methodologies as an external and behavioural occurrence. Such researches

have been extensively reviewed for instance by Mansfield et al. (1978).

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However up until today there is still no unified theory of creativity

accepted by all researchers. In fact because of the complexity of the
subject and also because of the variety of the manifestations of creativity
in real-life, agreement on a single theory would have been impossible.
Isaksen et al. (1985), Runco and Albert (1990), and Runco (2010), have
well reviewed the theories on creative problem solving and decisionmaking from a psychological point of view.
In this section alternatively we aim to investigate the creativity and
intuition from inside the brain with the aid of recent advancement of
neuroscience. Here we try to find the truth of intuitive decision-making in
the neuroscience of the brain. However there exist different theories of
brain functioning developed by devoted scientists, and the pieces of the
puzzle of creativity, as Jung et al., (2013) would say, are not quite gathered
to present a clear picture.
Nevertheless the current state of the research in this realm presents
interesting information that can well contribute in developing an
understanding about the intuitive problem solving and creative decisionmaking. This understanding would lead in a better managing of a
systematic balance between rationality and intuition in todays tough
business decision-making tasks.

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5.1 Study of the brain

Kandel et al. (2000) in the book principles of neural science argue that all
mental functions, including decision-making tasks, whether a creative
heuristic or a logical approach, come from the brain. In this sense studying
the structure, functions, neuroscience, ability and processing quality of the
brain plays an important role in investigation of the creative thinking,
problem solving and decision-making. Being aware of characteristics of
brain along with other psychological and sociological aspects of human
creativity, would be one of the major effective success factors to be
considered in implementing any BI tool (Rud, 2009). In fact the recent
research proves that the structure and the quality of data processing of the
human brain play an important role in creativity and innovation.
In the other words considering the human brain structure and its innerouter interactions would be essential in a successful aligning of the
business-intelligence (Watson et al. 2007), and also Business/IT alignment
(Murer 2011, Seigerroth 2011, Kaidalova and Seigerroth 2012) in
generadl. In other words in aligning any software application into business
in order to be able to achieve objectives the human factors, and before of
all the quality of implemented brain-computer-interaction should be well
considered.

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In this sense understanding the human brain, its limitations, functions and
potentials would give a concrete idea on what kind of tools can better
satisfy the need of todays businesses decision-making. The suitable tools
would be able to empower the information processing capability of human
brain and can well interact with the intuitive mind and decision-makers
gut feeling.

5.2 Brains Structure

The brain is one of the most complex entities in the universe. It is a highly
adaptable complex system, yet self-executed. The brain of a modern
human consists of some 100 billion cells, each of which connects and
communicates with up to 10,000 of other cells. Together they forge an
elaborate network of about one quadrillion connections (Pink, 2006).
To understand the mechanics of the process of a creative decision, it is
useful to have a deeper understanding of these connections within the
brain. Most importantly people relate differently to situations based on the
way their brains are wired (LeDoux, 1998).
The volume of a human brain, also known as cranial capacity, is often
measured in cm3 or cc. In the last some million years of evolution, from
the hominid lineage, the brain volume has increased from less than 600 cc
to about 1500 cc; to the brain volume of a modern human (Vilee, 1954).
Yet the structure, volume and connections of the brains parts during past
50,000 years have stayed unchanged (Holloway, 1996).

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In fact the cultural evolution has been much faster than biological
evolution as many of the stresses we experience in our lives today come
from a gap between what our cultures requires of us and the limitation of
our brain. In the other words the brain has limited resources to be able to
successfully deal with the huge amount of data analysis, information
processing and social contacts of current era (March, 1978).
Consequently modern human has been looking for tools and techniques to
adapt to the challenges of modern life (Deacon, 1997). In one hand
computers and on the other hand adapting to the situation have been two
options. In fact the plasticity characteristic of the brain has been helping
the human to adapt to the increasing complexity of community and life in
which we have been witnessing since early 20th century. Neuroscientists
shown that it is possible to change the actual structure of the brain and its
performance with practice. They claim it would be possible to train our
brain to have greater attention capacity and long-term memory to process
information more efficiently and to maintain a state of relaxed productivity
(Kelly & Garavan, 2005).
Brain is divided into a left and a right hemisphere called cerebral
hemispheres (neocortex). Within the two hemispheres there are the
neocortex and limbic system (including the corpus callosum). These four
parts are profoundly divided yet well interconnected with each other. Brain
has in fact been increasingly divided over the course of human evolution.
Consequently the ratio of the corpus callosom to the volume of the
hemispheres has got smaller over evolution. Yet one of the main functions
of the corpus callosum is in fact to inhibit the other hemisphere.

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The left cerebral cortex specializes in text while the right hemisphere
specializes in context. Within the brain, the left cerebral cortex interprets
the words. The right cerebral cortex processes all of the nonverbal parts of
the communication. The left cerebral cortex analyses the details; the right
cerebral cortex synthesizes the big picture. Basically, the left brain
analyses information in a linear manner. The right cerebral cortex
synthesizes information to create a whole. The left cerebral Cortex can
find problems, identify parts, and grasp details. The right part focuses on
interactions and relationships.
According to Rud (2009) however only the right brain can see the big
picture. In dealing with big data and complex information for decisionmaking e.g. in (Sandkuhl et al., 2012), frequent and proficient use of the
right hemisphere becomes increasingly important and beneficial.
More than 80 percent of the brain is in the neocortex which manages
processes

concerning

e.g. vision, hearing, sensations, reasoning,

purposeful behavior, language, thinking and decision-making, (Herrmann,

1981). The frontal lobes of neocortex are the most uniquely human of all
the components of the brain as they are responsible for intentionality,
foresight, and planning. Most recently it has been determined that the
prefrontal neocortex plays a central role in evaluating our actions, forming
goals and objectives, and implementing the plans (Damasio et al., 1993).

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The frontal lobes have great cognitive power that allows humans to look
into the future, predict and be proactive. This power gives humans the
ability to seek goals, make plans, dream and manipulate models to
represent and predict the future (Case, 1992), and most importantly
reading other peoples minds and intentions (McGilchrist, 2009).

Figure 16: Positions and divisions of Cerebral hemispheres, Corpus

Callosum, Cerebellum and frontal lobes (Roiser et al., 2009)

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Cerebellum is a powerful mechanism with more nerve cells than the rest of
the brain combined (Leiner, 1997). It quickly processes information from
all other parts of the brain, such as cognitive areas, language areas, and
also areas involving emotional functions. Its connections to the cerebral
cortex resemble segregated bundles, which allow it to communicate
complex information. Recent investigations (Javier, 2000; Claude, 2002)
suggest that the cerebellum is involved not only in skilled motor
performance but in skilled mental performance as well as sensory
acquisition, tracking and and most importantly prediction.
The connections within the brain can be categorized in two parts, those
within each hemisphere and those between the hemispheres and the two
halves of the limbic system. Corpus callosum as a part of limbic system,
connects the two cerebral hemispheres, is believed to have between 200
and 300 million fibers. Within the four areas, there are two patterns of
brain functioning, situational functioning and iterative functioning. To
improve efficiency, the brain determines which part to activate based on
the particular situation. Iterative functioning, in contrast, is a back-andforth movement of signals among the brains specialized centers that take
place to advance work on a task. Depending on the complexity of the task,
it can be a single iteration or multiple iterations between or within
hemispheres.

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Figure 17: Positions of Neocortex and Limbic system (Roiser et al., 2009)

The two halves of the limbic system are nestled into each of the two
cerebral hemispheres and make up most of the rest of the thinking cortex.
The limbic system (including Corpus Callosum and Amygdala) has one of
the richest blood supplies in the body. It regulates e.g. chemical balances
and most importantly producing emotions. In other words, it has the power
to overwhelm logical thinking with emotional energy (Leiner, 1997;
Roiser et al., 2009; LeDoux, 2003).

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One of the most important part of the limbic system which is involved in
processing emotions especially fear is Amygdala. When dealing with
transformation and moving in new directions in life or business, peoples
level of fear plays a prominent role in their ability and willingness to move
forward (LeDoux 2003).
Roiser et al. (2009) found out that Amygdala, which also has role in the
processing of memory, emotional reactions, emotional learning, memory
modulation, social interaction, aggression and fear, is in fact highly
involved in our decision-making. They descibed that Amygdala
emotionaly effect our everyday decision-making by controling the fear
pereseptaion which would be indeed pereseptaion of lost or gain. While
major rational decision-making of human is under effect of Amygdala, the
frontal lob part of the brain sometimes reduces the created emotional
responce. This would reduce the emotional effcet and let the brain to
produce more rational behavior.
In fact the frontal lobe highly contribute in rational decision-making. And
this is the frontal lobe part of the brain that contributes in creating
seamless heuristics. This is why those with damaged frontal lobe can not
make even simplest decision of daily life. Studing the people with no
frontal lobe reveals that even making the simplest decisions is in fact can
be a very complicated process (Fellows 2005). Yet these people who have
a damaged frontal lobe can still make rational decision via a controlled
process relying on moral algerba, i.e., writing down all the prons and cons
on a sheet of paper and doing calculation and comparision.

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Although doing so for every single decision in life would be demanding

and highly time consuming task. This would mean that frontal lobe can
automaticaly consider the prons and cons and confidently come up with
the satisfying solutions.
The recent findings of Roiser et al. (2009) mentioned above would
fundamentaly justify and support the Prospect Theory of psychologists
Kahneman & Tversky (1979). Their theory which is considered as a
behavioral economic theory describes the way people make decision
among probabilistic alternatives that involve risk and uncertainty.
Accordingly Roiser et al. (2009)s experiments basicaly prove that because
of the pereseptaion of lost or gain, people may choose to risk or play safe
(De Martino et al., 2006). In this case the interaction of Amygdala and
frontal lobe of the brain can explains why people make decision more
rationaly in the situation of gain and yet they may act more aggressively in
the situation of fear and lost. This would strongly suggest that intuition can
not be often true.

5.3 Theory of Left-Brain/RightBrain; Intuitive Mind

Vs. Rational Mind
After the first split-brain operation in 1969 by Roger W. Sperry, who was
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 the theory of left-brain/right-brain has
become very popular. His operation was performed by cutting the corpus
collosum, the structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.

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After the communication pathway between the two sides of the brain was
cut the patients found themselves unable to name objects that were
processed by the right side of the brain, but were able to name objects that
were processed by the left-side of the brain. Based on this experiment,
Sperry made a number of suggestions on the functions of the brain.

Figure 18: Intuitive vs. rational thinking,

(Image from http://www.olamoller.com/blog/)

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In short his theory is based on what is known as the lateralization of brain

function. It basically says that one side of the brain very specifically
controls a particular function(s), and people either are left-brained or rightbrained (Cherry 2010). Sperry further unveiled that the right brain is the
superior cerebral member when it came to performing certain kinds of
mental tasks. According to him in fact left brain functions sequentially and
excels at analysis (rational functions) while right brain operates
holistically, reads emotions, and recognizes patterns (intutive functions).
Following figure descibes the Sperrys theory further.

Figur19: Brain functions according to the theory of lateralization

(McGilchrist, 2009)

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According to the lateralization theory, the right side of the brain is best at
expressive and creative tasks. Some of the abilities that are popularly
associated with the right side of the brain include: recognizing faces,
expressing emotions, music, reading, emotions, color, images, intuition
and creativity.
Yet the left-side of the brain is considered to be devoted to at tasks that
involve logic, language and analytical thinking, Logic, critical thinking,
numbers, reasoning and rational thought in general. Above figure decribes
the brain functions acording to the lateralization theory.

5.4 Brain and Business Functions

On the basis of the theory of lateralization (Sperry 1969) it would be
possible to map a number of common business functions to a particular
quadrant of the brain (Herrmann, 1991 & 1981). For instance Left
Cerebral Cortex gathers facts, analyzes issues, solves problems logically,
argues rationally, measures precisely, understands technical elements and
considers financial aspects. the right cerebral cortex, on the other side,
reads signs of coming change, sees the big picture, recognizes new
possibilities, tolerates ambiguity, integrates ideas and concepts, bends or
challenges established policies, and does problem solving in intuitive
ways.

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Left limbic system finds overlooked flaws, approaches problems

practically, stands firm on issues, maintains a standard of consistency,
provides stable leadership and supervision, organizes and keep track of
essential data, develops detailed plans and procedures, implements projects
in a timely manner, articulates plans in an orderly way and keeps financial
records straight (Rud 2009).
Very differently right limbic system however recognizes interpersonal
difficulties, intuitively understands how others feel, picks up nonverbal
cues of interpersonal stress, relates to others in empathetic ways,
engenders enthusiasm, teaches, conciliates, understands emotional
elements and consider values (Herrmann, 1991).

5.5 Updated Theory of Lateralization

Based on the recent researches e.g. (Benes et al. 2000) although the right
brain might be what allows us to access more expansive thinking, the
effective use of both hemispheres (both cerebral cortexes) is necessary to
survive in our rapidly evolving business landscapes.
Later research (Singh & O'Boyle 2004) has shown that the brain is not
nearly as divided as once Sperry had thought. For example, recent research
by Singh and O'Boyle (2004) has shown that abilities in subjects such as
math are actually strongest when both sides of the brain work together.

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They found out that mathematically gifted teens did better than averageability teens and college students on tests that required the two sides of the
brain to cooperate. Those who were precocious in math were equally good
at processing global and local elements with either hemisphere, suggesting
more interactive, cooperative left and right brains.
In addition, whereas average-ability boys and college students were
slower on cooperative trials, the math-gifted showed the opposite pattern.
They were slower on one-sided trials, but when a task required both sides
of the brain to work together, they were considerably faster than the other
boys (Singh and O'Boyle 2004). Their study supports the growing notion
that the gifted problem-solvers are better at integrating information
between the cerebral hemispheres.
They conclude it is not that you have a special module somewhere in your
brain (whether right or left), but rather that the brain's particular
connection with right hemisphere would deliver the creativity. It has been
seen that interactive connection of right-left brain would be the source of
creativity in problem solving. In the other words creativity is about shifting
between rationality and intuition (Dane, 2007 & 2011).
Further research of neuroscientists on creativity e.g. (Schooler & Fiore,
1998; Kounios et al., 2008; Jung et al., 2013; Limb, 2008; Gilhooly et al.,
2007; Zabelina et al., 2012) investigate what actually happens in the brain
during the creative process.

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The latest findings from the real neuroscience of creativity suggest that the
right brain/left brain distinction is not the right one when it comes to
understanding how creativity is implemented in the brain (Jung et al.,
2013). Creativity does not involve a single brain region or single side of
the brain. Instead, the entire creative process consists of many interacting
cognitive processes and emotions. Depending on the stage of the creative
process, and what youre actually attempting to create, different brain
regions are recruited to handle the task.
However interactive connection of the left part of brain to the intuition
source of right brain can provide outstanding performance in decisionmaking and problem solving. Recent researches (Santhanam, 2006;
Brynielsson, 2009) even suggest that the human intuition may also be
integrated with computers where in fact computers would take part in
activities of the left part of the brain.
McGilchrist (2009) further explains the updated theory of lateralization as;
although the right hemisphere gives sustained, broad, open, vigilant,
alertness, and the left hemisphere gives narrow, sharply focused attention
to details, it is not true that one part of the brain does reason and the other
does emotion in dealing with a decision-making task. In fact both parts of
brain are profoundly involved in both rationality and intuition. This is not
limited to decision-making and problem solving tasks as further functions
such as language, visual imagery would be the result of interaction of both
hemispheres. He believes that for creativity both hemispheres should be
involved.

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Figure 20: Brain as a whole with both rational and intuition interactions
(McGilchrist, 2009)
He further explains that the right hemispheres manipulate the world as we
need to be able to creatively use, interact with the world and use it for our
benefit in a novel way. On other hand with left hemispheres we make
tools. In fact when brain already knows something is important and we
want to be precise about it we use our left hemispheres in that way. To
doing so human has been using a simplified version of reality such as a
simulation model or a reporting graph of visualization software or in our
case BI.
In this case using a simplified version of reality is considered as the
knowledge that is immediate by the left hemisphere. Even though it has
the advantage of perfection but lacks the creativity.

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In this sense the world of the left hemisphere is dependent on abstraction,

and it yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed,
static, isolated, explicit, and general in nature. Yet novelty of the right
hemisphere is always looking out for things that might be different from
our expectations in order to discover things in context, and understands
individuals, not just categories. In fact the right hemisphere yields a world
of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, and living
beings in the context of the dynamic world, and yet in the nature of the
unknown (McGilchrist 2009).
The role of the right brain in todays global economy in dealing with large
scale problems is vital. With computers becoming increasingly used at
handling the linear processes, the competitive advantage for humans is in
the ability to access the power of the right hemisphere. Furthermore the
skills needed to participate in an adaptive organization are also governed
dominantly by right hemisphere in an intuitive manner (Herrmann, 1981).
In fact, research suggests that brains right hemisphere is the only area that
deals effectively with change and the dynamic nature on business (Rud,
2009). But not to forget that in general, the two hemispheres of brain work
together to orchestrate every human activity (Herrmann, 1991). Yet
neuroscientists suggest that the two hemispheres approach every situation
slightly differently. Understanding and enhancing the use of one side or
the other can enhance creative endeavours (Rud, 2009).

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5.6 Neuroscience of intuition

Advancement of humanity is fundamentally dependent upon creativity and
innovation (Schooler & Fiore, 1998). As it was discussed in last section
human decision-making can be slow and deliberate followed by logic, or
rapid followed by intuition (Kahneman 2011).
Along with the general solutions to problem-solving strategies which are
methodical, conscious, and logical, people can solve problems intuitively,
way apart from logical thinking, with the strike of a novel idea which
emerges into consciousness (Kounios et al., 2008). In the other words
without thinking logically we sometimes come up with the creative
solution. Today the tools of neuroscience facilitate scientists to see the
intuitive function of the brain to be able to uncover the concepts of
intuition as it strikes. Very similarly to the psychological research in the
realm of neuroscience of brain also there exists different theories of brain
functioning developed by devoted scientists, yet the pieces of the puzzle of
creativity are not quite gathered to present a clear picture (Jung et al.
2013).
The long term idea to study the neuroscience of creativity in brain is that if
we were able to define the circuits of the creativity functions we will be
able to enhance them in many ways so at the end human might be better at
being creative. There are in fact parts in the brain that intuitively
correspond in the moments of creativity (Kounios, et al. 2008).

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With the aid of neuroscience we have the tools to see what creativity is,
and what goes on when people have moment of creativity. As the result the
source of such intuitive functions has been identified to be divergent
thinking, insight, or precognition (Limb, 2008).
1. Divergent thinking. Creativity and intelligence have been long known
to psychologists to be different processes in terms of human behaviour. In
fact the basic neural mechanism of intelligence, which is about the fast and
efficient wiring of neurons in the grey matter, has been known to scientists
for almost a century now (Lashley, 1929). Psychologists have found that a
high intelligence quotient (IQ) alone does not guarantee creativity.
Consequently intelligent people are not necessarily creative people.
Instead, personality traits which promote divergent thinking are considered
to be more important in creativity.
Divergent thinking as one of the creative mechanism of thinking is
identified as a thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring
many possible solutions. It is also identified as the essential capacity for
creativity to explore possible answers to a question. Divergent thinking is
found among people with personality traits such as nonconformity,
curiosity, willingness to take risks, and persistence (Gilhooly et al., 2007).
Therefore the ability to explore more options and solutions to a problem is
considered to be more valuable for creativity. Nevertheless the process of
creativity, as a complicated phenomenon inside the brain, has not been
totally clear to scientists up until now (Jung et al., 2010).

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Further research by neuroscientist Jung et al. (2010) has investigated this

realm with an exclusive focus on inter-structure of brain aiming to find out
what makes creativity. In their research the white matter of the brain and
the connective networks within have been reported to be highly connected
to the creativity. The white matter of the brain actually accommodates the
connective wirings that connect the regions of the brain which creates a
very complicated neural network. The structure of such neural network has
in fact major differences in highly creative persons as if the creative person
has way efficiently wired different parts of the brain. Jung et al. (2010)s
study connects the creativity more with the white matter of brain where the
simple, shortened and efficient structure of the connective neural networks
would allow the different creative ideas fellow speedy into the awareness
empowering the divergent thinking.
2. Insight. Insight is the overcoming some particular assumption when it is
suddenly realized that there is other way of doing things. This accuracy is
in fact the critical element of creativity (Schooler et al. 1993) as it targets
the problems that rational resources cannot solve. To doing so brain
functions in certain way to allow us to be creative. Accordingly insight has
been identified as one of the most important mental functions to be well
researched (Limb et al., 2008).
Due to the advancements of the neuroscience and availability of the tools
to actually study the functions and structure of brain the concept of
creativity has been recently become subjected to investigation from the
neuroscientific perspective providing the ability to investigate the
creativity from inside of the brain. This has been complementing the
former researches from psychological perspective.

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Zabelina et al. (2012) tried to capture the insight moments and novel ideas
utilizing an electroencephalography (EEG) cap over the head of volunteers
as they solve the problems. An EEG cap is the recording of electrical
activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from
ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain and can identify the
location of the brain activity at the time of insight (Niedermeyer &
daSilva, 2004). They identified that at the time of insight the superior
temporal gyrus of the right side of the brain is the parts that highly react
and is involved in the process of creativity. As the result they found out
that neurons in the right and left side of brain are very differently wired. In
the right hemisphere the neurons gather information from broader source
of inputs comparing to the left hemisphere and this would allow them to
connect to other parts of the brain.
In the other words the brain cells in the left hemisphere of brain have short
dendrites just useful to get information from the nearby parts. However the
cells of the right hemisphere branch way further to be able to get unrelated
ideas from other parts of the brain.
In fact having such broad connections has been the main reason that why
in this particular part of the brain the novel connections of concepts are
made in the instant of an insight (Zabelina et al. 2012).

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Further researches (Kounios et al., 2008; Wegbreit et al., 2012) show that a
very short moment before insight actually happens a burst of alpha waves
would occur at the back side of right hemisphere. The backside of the
hemisphere accomplishes the visual processing and yet the occurrence of
alpha waves shuts that aria down and would stop processing the visual
information. This occurrence right before the insight would stop the brain
distraction and it would be very likely to allow the novel idea to come up
to consciousness. This study suggests that cutting off the distraction of
outside world can help to increase the creativity. The process of cutting off
the distraction of outside world is called mind wandering (Schooler et al.,
2011).
Mind wandering has been found to be highly associated with creativity
(Smallwood et al., 2006). It means that taking a break from the problem
and doing something undemanding for some minutes and getting back to
the problem could highly increase the quality of insight leading to
creativity (Schooler et al., 2011). Furthermore mind wandering activities
such as taking long walks, meditation and bath, have been also
investigated to be highly effective in divergent thinking (Christoff, 2009).
Studying the brain while doing the mind wandering activities shows that
doing physical activities as such would affect the frontal lobes of the brain
to force the brain to go into a sleep mode (Jung et al., 2010).

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In this case down regulating the brain in this sense would be a motivation
for ideas to show up from subconscious to conscious and awareness. In
fact less activities in the frontal lobes has been highly associated with
creativity. This has been previously reported in improvisation and
creativity (Limb, 2008) as people with lower frontal lobe activities are
more creative. Consequently frontal lobes are now considered as the major
parts of the brain involved in creativity to be researched further.
Along with mind wandering it has been proven that visual hints also highly
contribute in insight (Bowden, 1997; Schooler 1999). In fact the evidence
for a meaningful relation between vision and creativity comes from the
striking parallels between creative discoveries and the perceptual
identification of degraded images (Schooler et al., 1995). Schooler and his
colleagues found out that by presenting the hints to the left vision field of
human which communicates with the right side of the brain the moments
of insight is highly enhanced. In fact the right side of the brain has found
out to be more sensitive to the hints leading to flash of insight.
3. Precognition. In the conventional perspective we make decision based
on our memory and our expectation which are all past stuff processed in a
way that allows us to make decision. Although this is often true but
sometime we make decision upon what is about to occur. In fact
sometimes people without knowing it sense the future and accordingly can
intuitively come to a creative solution.
One of the implications of such ability would be in decision-making.
Knowing the future in decision-making could be very handy.

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Yet knowing the future could be conscious or unconscious (Radin 1997).

Radin (1997) believes that people can sense the future and predict the
situations. Developing this ability in fact make some people exceptional
managers/leaders. He provides the evidence that such prediction ability
could be in fact precognition if they occur systematically instead of
following a guessing pattern (Radin 1988).

5.7 Discussions
The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits to rationality.
Pascal
Today most of enterprises are overwhelmed with the huge amount of
information. Nowadays with availability of the CCTVs, social networks
and huge data storages we are dealing with huge information but we are
not able to properly process them and use them with the rational
approaches such as BI. Todays managers in knowledge-based
organizations, especially those working in analytical and decision-making
positions, assume that right-brain creative processes are irrelevant to their
line of work (Rud 2009).
They only rely on rational approaches of data analytics where rationality,
simply, has no answer to the complexity involved. There is no doubt that
the logic and reasoning associated with left hemisphere of the brain is
desirable.

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For todays needs however increasing the usage of the knowledge which
comes from the right hemisphere and the need to benefit from a broader
context and novelty which is associated with the right hemisphere would
be vital (McGilchrist, 2009).
Nowadays decision-making tools are entirely made on rationality which
indeed limits the freedom of thoughts and creativity. As McGilchrist
(2009) would say in our modern world we develop something that looks
awfully like the left hemispheres world: we priorities the virtual over the
real, the technical becomes important. In this situation individuals tend
to favour more left-brain, linear, hierarchical thinking processes. However,
evidence shows that the best way to solve complex analytical problems is
to access the whole brain (Rud 2009). Consequently there is an economic
motivation and a human pull to move beyond the logical, linear,
reductionist view to a more compassionate, inventive, holistic and intuitive
approach.
Although Pascal, Einstein, Gerd (2007 & 2008) would respect rationality
they would favour more right side of the brain and go for intuition in
problem solving. On the other hand as we mentioned in last section
according to Kahneman & Tversky (1979) and their Prospect theory
intuition has failure moments in the situation of lost. The failure of
intuition in this section has been sourced to be the Amygdala which further
justifies Kahneman & Tversky (1979)s theory. In this situation clearly
dealing with the real-life problems with either intuition or rationality
would lead to a critical problem. They represent two different versions of
the worlds and sometimes we may combine them in different ways.

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Human however need to rely on certain rational approaches to manipulate

the world. Nevertheless for a broad understanding of todays problems we
should be utilizing knowledge that comes from the right hemisphere. This
can be happening via a well-designed human-computer-interaction which
presents a well-balanced of intuition and rationality. This would be an
alternative view that takes humanity through stages based on value
systems described in e.g. (Pink 2005) which would be a fascinating
concept with broad implications for human development.
Pink (2005) suggests a possible next level as more integrative than
conceptual (Roemischer 2002). He suggests that organizations can evolve
from the Information Age into one with high concept and high touch while
staying grounded within the system through a high level of connection. In
fact with the increasing of the global pressures and complexities, the next
phase for business would be the one that competes on innovation via
integration of human and technical resources, what is called Integral Age
(Beck 2002).

5.8 Final remarks and Lessons Learned

As all the mental functions, including decision-making, come from the
brain, studying the brain functions has been the particular concern.
Consequently in this chapter, with the aid of recent advancements of
neuroscience, the creativity and intuition were investigated.

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In fact being aware of characteristics, limitations, functions and potentials

of brain is considered to be one of the effective factors in implementing
any DSS tool. This chapter by providing an understanding about the
human brain give a concrete idea on what kind of tools may better satisfy
the need of todays businesses decision-making.
It was learned that some particular parts of the brain are more than other
parts are involved in decision-making. In fact the frontal lobe highly
contributes in rational decision-making and well contributes in creating
seamless heuristics. In addition the interaction of hand frontal lobe of the
brain explained the emotional decision-making rather rational one. This
would strongly suggest that intuition cannot be often effective. This
finding would fundamentally justify the Prospect Theory.
Nevertheless creativity has been seen as a product of the whole brain, and
a process that consists of many interacting cognitive processes and
emotions. In this sense the interactive connection of the rational part of the
brain and intuitive part can provide outstanding performance in decisionmaking and problem solving. Yet the role of the right brain in todays
global economy in dealing with large scale problems found to be vital. In
fact the brains right hemisphere is the only area that deals effectively with
change and the dynamic nature on business.
Today with computers becoming increasingly powerful at handling the
linear processes and data analysis, the competitive advantage for humans
is in the ability to access the power of the right hemisphere to deal with
uncertainty.

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In the situation that human has to rely on certain rational approaches to

manipulate the world, for a broad understanding of todays problems we
should be utilizing knowledge that comes from the right hemisphere. This
can be happening via a well-designed human-computer-interaction which
presents a well-balanced of intuition and rationality. Further evidence for a
meaningful relation between vision and creativity suggested that
information from rational tools can be visually communicated with the
human to reach the creative discoveries.
One of the other factors which should come to consideration for increasing
the creativity is to enhance the divergent thinking. Divergent thinking as
one of the creative mechanism of thinking is identified as a thought
process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible
solutions. Our study suggests that cutting off the distraction of outside
world can help to increase the creativity by enhancing the divergent
thinking. The process of cutting off the distraction of outside world is
called mind wandering. It means that taking a break from the problem and
doing something undemanding for some minutes and getting back to the
problem could highly increase the quality of insight leading to creativity.
Furthermore mind wandering activities such as taking long walks,
meditation and bath, have been also investigated to be highly effective in
divergent thinking.

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6 Experimental setup
There are many problems of pure theory, which no one who has once
learned to use diagrams will willingly handle in any other way.
(Marshall, 1890)
In this chapter we provide a methodology that ensures well benefiting
from intuition and creativity in solving large-scale and uncertain decisionmaking problems. Furthermore by considering a case study the
methodology is well presented.
In the chapter two it has been seen that a decision-making task in
particular in engineering design cannot be considered as an isolated
phenomenon. Instead the dynamic characteristics of the global business
competition must come to consideration. This would drag uncertainty to
the equation of the design. In addition considering multiple criteria in a
design and large databases would make the engineering design tasks as
large-scale decision-making problems. Yet in order to solve such problems
big data and uncertainty must be well considered.
The case study in materials selection for textile composites, described in
chapter two, gives the idea how a decision-making under uncertainty
might look like. As the conventional DSS and MCDM tools were unable
to address the complexity of such problem the human creativity and
intuitive decision-making have been introduced as the alternative solution.

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Previous chapters by providing a state of art review on the latest researches

on the topic offer a great understanding on the mechanism of intuition and
creativity. With the lessons learned from that survey a methodology is
accordingly developed in order to enhance the creativity. In this chapter
the methodology is evaluated by considering the case study of the
materials selection for textile composites.

6.1 Lessons learned from the past chapters

It was well understood that major DSS, e.g. BI had no answer to
complexity involved. Instead there have been always simple solutions
around associated with intuition. Intuitive mind is associated with
creativity which makes it very valuable in todays most complicated
business problems.
Neuroscience explains that the human emotions would highly effect the
rational decsion-making. In fact fear of gain and lost can dramatically
effect the decision. This finding would fundamentally justify the Prospect
Theory which strongly suggests that intuition cannot be often effective.
Therefore in utilizing the intuition in large-scale problems we should
exclude the human emotions from the process of decision-making in order
to reach acceptable decisions.

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On the other hand however it was learned that the regularity and practice
on utilizing a data analysis toolbox e.g. BI can enhance better decisions. In
this context the creative characteristic of human can well integrate with the
computation power of computers. The practice in utilizing such an
integrated decision-making system would result in creative decisions. As
regularity is proposed to be the key to successful intuitive decisions. Here
we should recall that the enemies of intuitive decision-making would be
indeed irregularity, absence of practice and emotional thinking. In this
sense practicing and mastering one of the conventional DSS tools and
regularity in dealing with similar cases would lead to creative decision.
Here we can conclude that using a BI tool in the above mention condition
would provide a fine systematic balance and combination of rationality
and intuition. This would be the proposal of a decision-making system
which is a well-designed human-computer-interaction presenting a wellbalanced integration of intuition and rationality.
In addition to above we have learned that there is a meaningful relation
between vision and creativity in the way that information from rational
tools can be visually communicated with the human for even a better
human-computer-interaction. Mosavi & Vaezipour (2012) described the
importance of visualization and multidimensional graphs in decisionmaking.
Once a decision-making system as such implemented in order to further
enhance the intuitive ability of decision-maker the mind wandering
activities such as taking breaks, taking long walks, meditation and bath,
would be highly effective in divergent thinking leading to creativity.

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6.2 Description of Methodology

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci (1452
1519)
A picture speaks a thousand words
Frederick Barnard (1846 1896)

According to the lessons learned in this section our methodology is

proposed. In the next section the method is implemented and evaluated in
the real-life case study of materials selection of composites.
The methodology was earlier published in the magazine of simulation
based engineering & science (Mosavi, Hoffmann, and Vaezipour, 2012)
where the methodology has been approved and recommended to the
industry by the Europes leader and key partner in design process
innovation; ENGINSOFT. Appendix.2 briefly includes this methodology
as well. In addition Vaezipour and Mosavi (2013c) described the method
and the solution further by evaluating different cases in materials selection
of composites. Vaezipour, Mosavi, and Seigerroth (2013b) further point
out the potential of this method in life science industries. In the next
section the method is particularly implemented to address the problem of
uncertainty and big data in composite design and materials selection.
The method has been designed in the way to be, in particular, an effective
decision-making tool at the hand of professional designer. In this case their
creativity will be enhanced and their intuition would be used in a more
confident manner. This would be by far contribute in creating heuristics

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which in this context of our particular importance. Being a reliable

decision -making procedure in engineering design applications it must be
simple as possible to be easily taken as a toolbox of data analysis.
Furthermore it must be able to present an effective integration of computer
data analysis power and human creative mind. In this case the decisionmaker can get an insight into the big data.
As it was learned mastering the utilization of a data analysis toolbox would
be one of the important and essential parts of a creative decision-making to
be at the hand of todays decision-maker. Here in order to make the usage
and mastering process easier for the common users simple data
visualization graphs are introduced to create a reliable computer-humaninteraction.
According to Jahan and Edwards (2013) one of the important issues in
which should come to consideration is that often in the process of
engineering design and manufacturing the whole process is dependent on
the professionals and expert engineering designer which typically are not
familiar with decision-making tools. Or in the other hand the task of
decision-making might be at the hand of professional decision-makers
whom are not a trained engineer. For this reason the methodology should
have been designed as simple as possible to be simply adopted by
engineers.
According to the methodology proposed the information of the huge
datasets, including the design criteria and simulations, are visually
presented to the engineer in a single but multidimensional graph.
Multidimensional graphs are the common tools available in the most BI

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tools. In this case the engineer can consider plenty of design criteria
simultaneously on a multidimensional graph. When by practice and
regularity in using such data analysis tool the procedure is mastered the
creativity in making fast decision is highly expected. In the other worlds
the intuitive decision-making in this case would be highly accountable.
6.2.1Multidimensional data Visualization
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
Richard Hamming (1962)

Battiti and Bruanto (2013) describe that a big portion of our brain is
devoted to processing visual information. Our ancestors needed to be very
fast to identify predators and to react accordingly. Todays we need to be
very fast to transform huge amounts of information into insight,
knowledge, engineering designs and, decisions.
According to Larkin and Simon (1987) decision makers in different
domains such as physics and engineering make extensive use of
visualization and for this matter diagrams are of particular importance.
They suggested that a diagrammatic representation in an informationprocessing system is beneficial. Data visualization by Battiti and Burantu
(2011) was introduced as a great data representation, with computational
efficiency which makes it a very valuable tool in dealing with big data.
According to Geoffion (1976) visualization is an effective approach for
decision-making as it can well summarize the information into an insight,
instead of numbers. Mosavi & Vaezipour (2012) described the importance
of visualization and multidimensional graphs in decision-making. However

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Jones (1994) noted that due to poor visualization techniques, the nature of
decision conflicts may not completely come to consideration. Therefore
the decision-makers may not be able to confidently make decisions. Yet
according to Piero (2009), and later Battiti & Brunto (2013) during past
few years, due to the huge development in combinatorial optimization,
machine learning and intelligent optimization, there has been a huge
advancement in visualization tools.
The proposed methodology of multidimensional visualization can be
implemented using the common BI tools available at the market. The
methodology presents effective and flexible software architecture for
integrating problem-solving and decision-making schemes into the
integrated engineering design processes and optimal design. The workflow
in this case implements a strong and seamless interface between the
analytics and decision-maker. While multidimensional visualization
systems produce different solutions, the decision-maker will be pursuing
conflicting goals and tradeoffs which are represented on the multidimensional graphs. This methodology can be learned and mastered easily
and with practice on the different problems the regularity in using such
system can be achieved.

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Figure 21. Multidimensional visualization, considering five design criteria

simultaneously

Above figure present a sample of multidimensional data visualization of

the proposed methodology. A number of design criteria can be
simultaneously considered. The big data from large databases including
the result of engineering simulation would bring instant insight into the
designer. In the situation that the designer is well familiar with such

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system, when his/her emotions are not involved in decision-making, the

creative results are highly expected.
During considering a project however the mind wandering activity, as we
studied earlier, would even further enhance the creative decisions.

6.3

Implementation

The methodology that is described above, here is implemented to solve a

large-scale problem where the big data and uncertainty are involved. In
this case the methodology can be well evaluated. This case study which
was briefly introduced in the chapter two is concerned with optimal design
of textile composites where a wide range of materials databases are
considered. As it was explained this case would be a more challenging task
where the number of design criteria and uncertainty are expanded.
The full description of the implementation is given by (Mosavi, Hoffmann
& Vaezipour, 2012; Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2013c). In the following the
problem and the implementation of the methodology is briefly described.
6.3.1Description of the case study
According to Barbero (2010) textile composite materials consist of a
polymer matrix combined with textile reinforcement. Typical applications
range from high performance aerospace components to structural parts of
transportation industry. In fact because of the numerous advantages of
composites in comparison to traditional materials there has been an
increasing trend in the usage of composite materials in different industries.

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Yet selecting the suitable materials for a particular application(s) has been
always of importance. In this sense the objective of composite product
design, according to Edwards (2005), is to define the characteristics of the
materials of a product in order to increase functional performance as much
as possible.
For the design of composites parts, a series of criteria including quality,
mechanical, electrical, chemical, cost, and environmental aspects are to be
simultaneously considered. As one of the most efficient approach, the
MCDM applications has been used to systematically compare different
alternatives against the large sets of design criteria. Yet such applications
have been efficient only in considering the simple tasks in an isolated
manner. Although MCDM applications e.g. (Vermaak, 2005) have been
previously presented to deal with decision conflicts often seen among
design criteria in materials selection, many drawbacks and challenges are
identified associated with their applicability due to uncertainty and big
data.
As Barbero (2010) describes the manufacturing of woven reinforced
composites requires a forming stage so called draping, in which the textile
take the desired shape. Since fiber reorientation influences the overall
performance it would be an important factor that in the process of material
selection to consider the draping along with the other criteria. This has
been the reason why the draping should be well considered in the process
of design.

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Figure 22: Simulation of draping process including (Vaezipour & Mosavi,

2013c)
Robles (2011) also emphasizes that in an optimal engineering design
process for the textile composites, the materials selection integrated with
draping can well determine the durability, cost, and manufacturability of
final products. McDowell (2010) also believes that the result of the
draping simulation for different materials should be considered to come up
with the suitable and qualified materials. In this case as well as the right
angel of draping, the draping simulation needs to be carried out for a
number of draping degrees for a particular material.
Tabiei (1999) and Vermaak (2005) previously proposed an integrated
system of materials selection considering the performance of the final
product. However the mechanical performance of the textile during the
draping process has not been fully integrated in their approaches.

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Figure 23. Considering different materials and different draping angles

Due to the complexity involved in such an integration design process

Jahan and Edwards (2013) note that this would be happening only by shift
from costly and time-consuming experimentation to less costly
computational modeling and decision-making procedures. In this case the
criteria of mechanical behavior of the woven textile during the draping and
further involved simulations and analysis are included in the process of
decision making. Robles (2011) and Vermaak (2005) also positively
comment on such process in terms of economical interests. In addition
Sirisalee (2006) believes that such strategy would improve the design
process and also can empower designers in considering the role of
materials selection in design of products.
However on the other hand according to Rakshid (2008) by integrating the
mechanical behavior of woven textiles during the draping process and also
considering the complexity of the dynamic market and investigation on the
cost and properties of the candidate materials the conventional design
approaches of MCDM and BI will be unable to deal effectively with the
dimension of the case. Concerning the complexity it is desired to choose
the most reliable, comprehensive and innovative tools to solve the

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complex problem of a combined engineering and business task and arrive

at target improvements. In the light of this the proposed methodology aims
to improve the selection and design procedure.
Ashby (1999) further points out that the process of materials selection is
highly dependent on data related to material properties. In fact with a large
number of materials, clearly there is a need for an informationmanagement system. Therefore in this case the materials databases are
used as materials selection systems, which are essentially developed for
data storage searching. Moreover according to Jahan (2013) and Ashby
(2004) the electronic materials databases and data search software
packages would help designer in this regard.
According to above here the results of all the draping simulations of
different drap angles are gathered as the dataset for consideration, in
addition to already existed datasets of the materials properties given by
Milani (2011), also available in Appendix.4.
Following figures show the results of a number of draping simulations.
The detail of the simulation procedure is described by Mosavi et al.
(2012).

Figure 24. Draping process for a number of draping degrees (Vaezipour &
Mosavi, 2013c)

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Figure 25: A sample of visual database of draping process for a number of

draping degrees. (Mosavi, Hoffmann & Vaezipour, 2012)

6.4 Considering the results

Considering the textile composite materials selection and design case
study in the multidimensional graph provided in the following figure fix
different design criteria is considered simultaneously. In this case cost,
weight, electrical, environmental, mechanical factors and most importantly
draping simulation results are considered.
The draping simulation for different materials and different draping angles
which are stored in the database here are well available for consideration.

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Figure 26. Multidimensional visualization graph used for considering

different products, materials and draping characteristics simultaneously.
Here the cost, weight, environmental, electrical, and mechanical factors
are simultaneously considered (Mosavi, Hoffmann & Vaezipour, 2012).

Following figure presents a different snapshot of considering different

materials, product and draping simulation in order to come up with a
creative decision.

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Figure 27. Considering a particular (Vaezipour & Mosavi, 2013c)

Here modeling, visualization and learning tools via a handy procedure

stretches beyond a decision-making task and attempts to discover new
optimal designs relating to decision criteria, so that an insight of deeper
understanding of the underlying problem can be obtained. The
applicability of multidimensional visualization can be easily customized
for different problems and usage contexts. This case study in the concrete
context of designing textile composite products have shown the
effectiveness of the approach in rapidly reaching a design preferred by the
decision-maker at the present of big data and dynamic market.

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7 Results
Our research aimed to address the decision-making problems related to
engineering design particularly where uncertainty and big data are
involved. For that matter our reseach method particularly aimed to answer
the reseach main question i.e. how to benefit from intuition and creativity
in solving large-scale and uncertain decision-making problems. For this
reason, in fact, it is desirable to find out that what IS tool can be more
effective while dealing with real-life cases. In the last three chapters these
questions have been well answered. In this chapter we try to summerize
our achievements as the results of our research work. In the following the
contribution of our research is provided.

It has been shown that for the reason to solve the large-scale problems as
such, due to the complexity involved, the usage of intuition would be
inevitable. Accordingly this report primarily expanded knowledge, insight
and understanding on the subject of intuition, creativity and their potential
applications in enterprise decision-making tasks where uncertainty and
large databases are the major challenges.

Furthermore it was shown that how we should benefit from the great
potential of the intuition while minimizing the drawbacks of it. For this
reason the main objective of this research has been set to reach a
systematic balance between intuition and rational tools of analytics in
solving large-scale problems. In this case the intuition as one of the main
sources of creativity and insight in enterprises, instead of being constantly
ignored, is aimed to be understood better. To doing so creating knowledge
on the mechanism of intuition, human creativity and also practically

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considering a number of real-life decision-making problems have been

done.

In order to benefit from the intuition in solving large-scale problems under

uncertainty it would be essential yet adequate taking into consideration the
enemies of intuition which are irregularity, absence of proactive and
emotional decision-making. In this sense practicing and mastering one of
the conventional DSS tools and regularity in dealing with similar case
would lead to better decision. It is concluded that the permanent solution
to creative problem-solving is neither intuition nor rationality but a fine
systematic balance and combination of these two.

Further our research on the neuroscience the concept of creativity was

better understoond. The creativity has been identified as a product of the
whole brain, and a process that consists of many interacting cognitive
processes and emotions. In this sense the interactive connection of the
rational part of the brain and intuitive part can provide outstanding
performance in decision-making and problem solving. This can be
happening via a well-designed human-computer-interaction which presents
a well-balanced of intuition and rationality. Further evidence for a
meaningful relation between vision and creativity suggested that
information from rational tools can be visually communicated with the
human to reach the creative discoveries.

One of the other factors which should come to consideration for increasing
the creativity is to enhance the divergent thinking. Divergent thinking as
one of the creative mechanism of thinking is identified as a thought

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process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible

solutions.

Furthermore mind wandering activities have been also investigated to be

highly effective in divergent thinking.

In respect to the above findings our research results in a methodology that

is reliable on effectivly deal with large-scale decision-making tasks under
uncertainty and big data. The proposed methodology includes the usage of
visual analytics in dealing with such problems where the intution and
creativity can be well nurtured and empowered.

The experimental setup presented in chapter six via considering a large

scale problem has well proven the effective usage of intuition in dealing
with large-scale problem under uncertainty. In the considered case study
the data visualization tools have been shown to the effective way to benefit
from the intuition and increase the reliability of the intuitive decisionmaking for empowering the creativity in solving large-scale and uncertain
decision-making problems. To doing so the visual analytics as the
potential tools of IS are proposed to be the effective tools in dealing with
real-life cases.

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8 Conclusion
In this research we have discussed that todays enterprises due to
globalization and more competition in the dynamic business market face
way more complicated decision-making tasks ever. Accordingly in the
particular application of engineering design the product development
cannot be seen as an isolated process anymore. In fact the task of decisionmaking, in the dynamic nature of the modern-days industries and
businesses at the presence of complex circumstances, uncertainties, limited
time, and inadequate computational power is considered as a large-scale
and complicated problem.
We have discussed that rational tools and conventional decision support
systems due to the big data and uncertainty of the todays dynamic market
cannot be effective. Further as an alternative using the human intuition and
creativity have been proposed to be very effective and beneficial. As in
fact decision-makers are encouraged to make a virtue of the limited time,
information and knowledge by following the creative approaches by
mastering simple heuristics and utilizing intuition. Consequently this
report aimed to investigate that how we may benefit from intuition and
creativity in solving large-scale and uncertain decision-making problems.
Nevertheless understanding the concept of intuition and systematically
using it in the situation that the mechanism, success/failure ratio, marvels
and flaws of intuition are still under debate, is considered to be vital in
fuelling the creativity, making fast decisions, and reacting appropriately to
the dynamic market.

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Our research revealed that in order to very effectively benefit from the
potential of intuition the influence of human emotions e.g. fear of gain and
lost, should be excluded from the process of decision-making. Moreover
regularity and practice on utilizing a data analysis tool box e.g. BI would
enhance the intuitive decision-making. By considering the above two
lessons we can well benefit from the intuitive decision-making and make
confident decisions in an uncertain and large-scale problem. In addition it
has been argued that mind wandering activities are highly effective in
enhancing the creativity.
According to the lessons learned in the following of the report a
methodology is proposed in dealing with decision-making tasks under
uncertainty and big data. The methodology presents a well-designed
human-computer-interaction which presents a well-balanced of intuition
and rationality. In this case a meaningful relation between vision and
creativity was implemented where the information from the BI tool can be
visually communicated with human to reach the creative discoveries. To
doing so the intuitive the role of the right brain in dealing with the large
scale problems found to be vital. In this sense the interactive connection of
data analysis tool of BI and intuitive part of human brain can provide
outstanding performance in decision-making and problem solving.
A case study in engineering design and material selection of textile
composites was then given to evaluate the effectiveness of the
methodology. In the provided case study the integration of rational tools of
data analysis and intuitive mind was well implemented resulting creative
decisions.

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Needless mentioning that along with carrying out the case study, which
has been previously published, the concepts of business modelling,
requirement specification, algorithms implementation and software testing
are well practiced.

8.1 Future research

Once the potential and drawbacks of intuition in creative decision-making
understood, consequently enterprises would confidently govern their IT
investments in the way to employ more suitable BI software. As it was
discussed analytics software packages for decision-making including BI
often lack the proper tools to communicate the true insight out of data.
Moreover their data processing strategy is limited to mining the historic
data. As Battiti & Brunato (2013) would say it would be Like driving a
car by looking into the rear view mirror, its highly likely that youre
going to hit something. Yet todays enterprises are struggling to replace
advanced technologies with those that not only can make sense of the
present data but those that also can provide guidance for the future by
capabilities to model and evaluate the what-if-scenarios. Consequently
BI market currently is witnessing a shift from traditional analytics to
predictive analytics. Although predictive analytics belongs to the BI
family, it is emerging as a distinct new software sector.

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Predictive analytics would provide better insight to the problems and the
effect(s) of a number of potential decisions can be evaluated. This would
in fact empower the divergent thinking. Furthermore a clear insight to the
problem and the whole dimension of the decision-making task can enhance
the creation of heuristics and informed decisions which are in fact
optimized choices. Therefore it would be a transmission from the data
directly to the best improving plan, from actionable insight to actions!
(Battiti & Brunato, 2013). One way to doing so would be machine learning
integrated with optimization earlier described in e.g. (Vaezipour et. al,
2013c).
With the above description, the research on predictive analytics sounds
very tempting for further developments as the tools as such can determine
the probable future outcome of an event, the likelihood of a situation
occurring and a short cut to the complicated optimization tasks. This has
been the main reason why we have already focused our further research on
the applications of predictive analytics in e.g., informed decisions (Mosavi
& Vaezipour, 2013; Vaezipour et al., 2012a), health and life sciences
(Vaezipour et al., 2013b; Vaezipour et. al, 2013c) life science industry
(Vaezipour & Mosavi 2013b) and prediction of Parkinson disease
(Vaezipour, 2013b).
Today visual analytics as a very fast outgrowing science and independent
field of BI and analytical reasoning very particularly provides advanced
data visualization tools facilitated by visual interactive interfaces.

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Even though in this report we very limited touch the potential, importance
and convenience of using data visualization tools provided by the
conventional BI tools (Vaezipour, et al., 2013b & 2013c; Vaezipour, &
Mosavi, 2013c), the concept of visual analytics worth a separate research.

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10 Appendix
Appendix 1.
A. Vaezipour, A. Mosavi, Managing decision making within enterprise,
International
CAE
Conference,
2012,
Verona,
Italy.
http://p.caeconference.com/proceedings/c2012/posters/vaezipour

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Appendix 2.
A. Mosavi, M. Hoffmann, A. Vaezipour, Grapheur for Material Selection,
ENGINSOFT newsletter, simulation based engineering & Sciences, No.4,
Winter 2012. http://www.enginsoft.it/newsletter/files/newsletter12-4.pdf

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Appendix 3.
A. Vaezipour, A. Mosavi, Visual Analytics for Multi-Criteria Decision
Analysis, International CAE Conference, Verona, Italy, 2013.
http://proceedings2013.caeconference.com/poster/pdf/03_Mosavi.pdf

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Appendix 4.
Multi-disciplinary property values of candidate materials in the present
case study; taken from this article: Milani, A. S., et al. "Multiple criteria
decision making with life cycle assessment for material selection of
composites." Express Polymer Letters 5.12 (2011): 1062-1074.

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Appendix 5.
Full text of; A. Mosavi, and A. Vaezipour "Reactive Search Optimization;
Application to Multiobjective Optimization Problems." Applied
Mathematics 3.30 (2012): 1572-1582.

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Appendix 6.
A. Mosavi, and A. Vaezipour "Reactive Search Optimization; Application
to Multiobjective Optimization Problems." Applied Mathematics 3.30
(2012): 1572-1582.
Welded beam design problem implementation in Scilab;
g_name = "weldedBeam";
g_dimension = int8(4);
g_range = int8(5);
g_min = [ 0.125, 0.1, 0.1, 0.125, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0,

0.0];

g_max = [ 5.0, 10.0, 10.0, 5.0, 350.0, 0.05, 1.0, 1.0, 10000.0];
g_names = ["welding depth (h)", "welding length (l)", "height (t)",
"thickness (b)", "fabrication cost (f1)", "end deflection (f2)", "f1 with
penalty", "f2 with penalty", "Penalty"];
P = 6000.0; L = 14.0; E = 3.0e7;
deltaMax = 0.25;
G = 12.0e6;
tauMax = 13600.0;
sigmaMax = 30000.0;
function f=g_function(x)
h = x(1),

l = x(2),

t = x(3),

b = x(4)

//objectives
f1 = 1.10471*h*h*l + 0.04811*t*b*(14.0+l)
f2 = 4*P*(L^3) / (E*b*t^3)
//constraints
Penalty = 0
tau1 = P / (sqrt(2)*h*l)
M = P * (L + 0.5*l)
R = sqrt(.25 * (l*l + (h+t)^2))
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J = 2.0 * (h*l/sqrt(2)) * (l*l/12.0 + .25 * (h+t)^2)

tau2 = M * R / J
tauX = sqrt(tau1*tau1 + ((tau1*tau2*l)/R) + tau2*tau2)
if tauX > tauMax then
Penalty = Penalty + (tauX - tauMax) / tauMax
end
sigmaX = 6.0*P*L / (b*t*t)
if sigmaX > sigmaMax then
Penalty = Penalty + (sigmaX - sigmaMax) / tauMax
end
if h > b then
Penalty = Penalty + (h - b) / b
end
PcX = (4.013*sqrt(E*G*t*t*b^6/36.0)/(L*L)) * (1t/(2*L)*sqrt(E/(4.0*G)))
if PcX < P then
Penalty = Penalty + (P - PcX) / P
end
if Penalty > 0 then
f1p = g_max(5) + Penalty
f2p = g_max(6) + Penalty
else
f1p = f1
f2p = f2
end
f = [f1, f2, f1p/g_max(5), f2p/g_max(6), Penalty]
endfunction;

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Appendix 7.
A. Vaezipour, Prediction of Parkinson with machine learning, Annual SAS
Analytics Conference, Orlando, Florida, October 21-22, 2013. (Poster
submitted to SAS Analytics 2013; Student Poster Competition.)

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Appendix 8.
A. Vaezipour, A. Mosavi, LIONsolver for life science industry,
International CAE Conference, Verona, Italy, 2013.
http://proceedings2013.caeconference.com/poster.html

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Appendix 9.
A. Vaezipour, A. Mosavi, U. Seigerroth, Visual analytics for informeddecisions, International CAE Conference, Verona, Italy, 2013.
http://proceedings2013.caeconference.com/poster.html

199