Key takeaway
The argument in this brief is that gut-feel product decisions can move fast while creating costly reversals later. Its recommendation is to use structured research when the problem is unfamiliar, the market is new, or the cost of being wrong is high.
Gut-feel decisions have a real appeal: they're fast, they feel decisive, and when you have deep domain experience they're often right. The trouble is the failure mode. An intuitive call on an unfamiliar problem doesn't fail loudly at decision time — it fails quietly, months later, as a feature nobody adopts or a reversal that costs far more to unwind than the research would have cost up front.
Why Gut Feel Fails
Intuition works well when you have deep domain experience and the problem is familiar. Most product decisions are neither. You're entering new markets, building for new customers, or responding to new competitors.
In those moments, speed without structure is just expensive guessing.