The Hindu Business Line : <I>To buy or sell? First take an MRI!</I>

Social scientists have long sought to invest the fields of management, economics, sociology and so on with an aura of precision and credibility by importing into them terminologies and methodologies reminiscent of physical and biological sciences such as Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Thus, management has gate-crashed into the domain of science, and economics, which had already presumed to promulgate apparently immutable laws, expanded into econometrics replete with imposing models and a series of painstakingly numbered mathematical equations.

Words of the ilk of dynamics, structure, architecture, and DNA have found entry into the studies of leadership, decision-making, market forces and economic, financial and business transactions. Varieties of concepts and approaches drawn from psychology, biology, genetics and the like are being bandied about to interpret and predict the behaviour of individuals (for example, employees, customers, consumers and investors) and organisations.

These trends have now expectedly, ineluctably and irreversibly snowballed into a wholesale (mis?)appropriation of a mélange of techniques of investigation and diagnosis borrowed from medicine. This column was the first to take a peep into the shape of things to come by pointing to the yoking of neurology to marketing (Neuromarketing, January 5, 2005).

In this field of study, consumer-volunteers are wired to functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG), and positron emission tomography (PET) machines to record the response of their brains to names of companies, sight, taste or use of particular products or brands, or stimuli such as content of advertisements or sales pitch by charting and registering their brain activity. Neuromarketers claim that by undertaking sufficient number of experiments with a wide cross-section of consumers in different parts of the world, they would be able to locate areas of the brain to serve as remotely and automatically operated `buy' buttons. Can neuroleadership and neuroeconomics be far behind?

Science or science fiction?

The world's first Neuroleadership Summit is going to be held at Asolo, Italy, on May 14-16, to provide a forum for neuroscientists, leadership development experts and business executives to discuss the uses of MRI, QEEG and PET technologies in building the knowledge base that leaders must have about their own brain, understanding the connections between brain function and good leadership skills.

A Neuroleadership Institute also is in the offing to undertake studies of neural configurations by which the brain takes on the functions of the mind (the human consciousness that thinks, feels, acts, and perceives).

(Visit http://www.strategy-business.com/press/freearticle/06207?pg=0 for a write-up on Neuroscience of Leadership.)

What of neuroeconomics? Is it science or science fiction (to borrow from the title of an article by Prof. James Heskett of the Harvard Business School)? Opinion is naturally divided. It is of little use knowing whether decisions to buy or sell emanated from the right or left side of the brain, without having an insight into the exact ratiocination that preceded the making of a decision. Matters are further complicated by the fact that different economic activities or decisions fall within the purview of different sides of the brain. For instance, risk appraisal may belong to the right side, whereas return prospects may be assessed by the left. There has as yet been no sure way of mapping the brain to ascertain how it reconciles contradictions or even whether at all the final outcome reflects the reconciled position.

However, we seem to be speeding into an era where `neuro' will be attached to every discipline under the Sun, just as `total' was until some time ago! One thing is for sure: MRL scan centres will be doing roaring business!

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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