How does a company like Apple consistently release innovative products that sell like gangbusters? It's simple: Rather than relying on data alone, the upper management also listens to its heart.

From Businessweek: "(Intuition is) critical. It’s extremely critical. The most important things in life, whether they’re personal or professional, are decided on intuition. I think you can have a lot of information and data feeding that intuition. You can do a lot of analysis. You can do lots of things that are quantitative in nature. But at the end of it, the things that are most important are always gut calls. And I think that’s just not true for me, but for many, many people. I don’t think it’s unique."