Jeff Widman, an old friend from Techstars ”08 writes about his analytics vision:

If you heavily rely on analytics, you might miss breakthroughs because you’re so stuck on gradually evolving… how do you balance learning from feedback loops and simply taking a leap with your gut?

My 2 cents:

If you”re tracking the right metrics, and view those analytics as the validation part of your decision making process, and not the entirety of your decision making process, then no.

My team members and I have other input sources for deciding what our priorities are: Our mentors, our board, our analytics, our gut, and subject-specific literature. Our analytics is just one of those inputs. Specifically, it”s the input source that allows us to know if the advice we”re getting from other inputs is both valid for and applicable to our business.

I think if you”re tracking the right metrics, you”re not going to miss your next breakthrough. Conversely, you”re going to be looking at the justification for the decision that causes that breakthrough.