3 Key Ways Business Leaders Can Harness the Power of Neuroscience

Executives are learning that creative ideas and innovations come from combining advanced business experience with different and exciting fields of study. Among the latest and greatest disciplines to mix with business acumen is neuroscience, which focuses on understanding how the brain functions. Business leaders who take neuroscience courses online can tap into the cognitive processes underlying everyday human behaviors to improve company performance into the future. In particular, here are three ways neuroscience can be useful to business execs.

Understand Customers More

It is hardly a tightly kept secret that a deeper and more detailed understanding of a target audience leads to greater business success. When business leaders can utilize accurate consumer profiles to make business decisions, those decisions are more likely to be effective at compelling consumers to engage with the brand and take steps down the sales funnel. While there are many strategies for acquiring information about customer wants, needs, likes, dislikes, buying processes and more, they can certainly be improved through the application of neuroscience.

Neuroscience allows business leaders to peer inside the brains of their customers to access information that consumers themselves might not consciously recognize. With data gleaned through neuroscientific research, business execs can put even more detail into their consumer profiles, radically enhancing the power of critical components of business strategy, such as product and packaging design and marketing methods.

1. Build Stronger Teams

In a post–Great Resignation world, many business leaders are desperate to develop effective strategies for attracting and retaining top talent. Employees are not as forgiving as they once were; despite a looming economic recession, roughly 40 percent of workers expect to leave their current positions within six months because their employers are not adequately meeting their needs.

Just as neuroscience can provide executives with an in-depth look at customer desires and behaviors, research in this field can offer the same information from employees — and prospective employees. Neuroscience can reveal more about how an individual functions, cognitively and behaviorally, which means business leaders may gain the power to assemble teams of workers who work more intuitively with one another. More effective teams will lead to greater business success, and successful businesses will attract the attention of talented and ambitious professionals.

2. Make Better Decisions

Finally, good business leaders make decisions using the data they collect from the world around them. The more plentiful the data executives have available, the more impactful the decisions they make can be. To that end, neuroscience functions as another avenue of data collection and analysis that can influence the decisions business leaders make every day. What’s more, because so few organizations invest in neuroscience as yet, the business leaders that do take advantage of this field are likely to develop strategies that provide a competitive advantage in their market.

3. How Businesses Collect Neuroscience Data

Neuroscience courses can provide business leaders with a strong foundation in this advanced science. Many neuroscience courses designed for executives will focus on brain science basics, such as how the brain is structured, how it develops and changes and how leaders themselves can optimize their brain function. Some courses might also help leaders understand how some existing and ongoing neuroscience research might provide insights into the needs, wants and behaviors of consumers, employees and executive leadership.

However, once a business leader has laid their foundation of knowledge and skill, they need to develop strategies for capitalizing on the potential power of neuroscience. How an executive can utilize neuroscience could depend on the size of an organization and that organization’s tolerance of risk.

Many smaller businesses might do well merely leveraging the knowledge and skill gained through continued education in the field. Larger organizations might engage in consumer or employee research through applied neuroscience, which involves studies using mobile brain scanning tools, like EEG headsets or eye-tracking tech, to understand the brain’s response to certain stimuli. The largest corporations eager to experiment with new opportunities might utilize traditional neuroscience techniques, like MRI scanners, to acquire specific and actionable insights to guide their operations.

Business leaders do not need to become neuroscientists themselves to find ways to leverage the power of neuroscience in business strategy, though working with experienced researchers in the field of neuroscience may provide even more valuable insights to guide critical aspects of business strategy. Ultimately, business leaders should be open to exploring new fields, like neuroscience, to drive their operations toward success.