The Unmeasured Influence

Op-ed by Trinity Rose

Many founders who built the companies that defined entire industries describe their breakthrough moments in remarkably similar ways: they sensed something others couldn't see. Steve Jobs spoke of trusting what he called his "intuitive antenna." Sara Blakely cut the feet off pantyhose because something suggested women needed this solution, years before market research would validate the insight. Melanie Perkins spent years pitching Canva to investors, sustained by a vision that seemed to contradict conventional wisdom about design software. They call it instinct, timing, or vision—though rarely name what it might actually be: intuition.

There's something curious about this pattern. These breakthrough moments shaped entire industries, yet business education and culture seem to treat them as anomalies rather than capabilities worth developing. Systems and structure dominate curricula and corporate priorities while the more intangible aspects of decision-making and what allows for a business to succeed remain largely unexamined. Dr. Tara Swart's evolution as a neuroscientist offers an interesting lens into this tension. Her first book, The Source, positioned intuition within the

context of neuroscience, pattern recognition, subconscious processing, and the brain's capacity to synthesize information below conscious awareness, thereby creating a bridge between mystical concepts and scientific credibility.

Her appearance on The Diary of a CEO podcast reached 16 million views on YouTube alone, suggesting this approach struck a deep chord: as if millions had been waiting for permission to take their intuitive experiences seriously.

Her recent return to The Diary of a CEO in honor of her new book, "Signs" reveals a marked shift in her perspective. Swart now argues we possess 36 senses rather than the commonly accepted five, and her forthcoming book explores what has been described as the shocking discoveries behind signs, intuition, and communication with the dead. The evolution feels striking, a neuroscientist who once translated mystical experiences into familiar scientific terms is now investigating phenomena that challenge the boundaries of conventional science altogether. There's something notable about the willingness to venture into territory that could easily invite professional skepticism, suggesting perhaps that

the conversation around these topics is shifting in ways that make such exploration feel less risky than it once might have.

The accumulating research on consciousness and decision-making continues to reveal how much processing happens outside our awareness. But the broader question may not be whether science will eventually explain the intangible, but whether dismissing the unexplainable because it doesn't fit current frameworks reduces our capacity to perceive and respond to the world in its entirety. What might become possible if business culture embraced a fuller spectrum of awareness—where pattern recognition, sensing, and the unmeasurable were developed alongside analytical skills rather than dismissed in favor of them?

All of which leaves me wondering, what might it mean to operate in a world where the unexplainable is recognized as valuable, even when unmeasurable—where decisions emerge from the intersection of analysis and intuition, where the most important information sometimes arrives not through reports, but through the courage to pay attention to what cannot yet be quantified.