Deborah Meaden, venture capitalist

It may seem surprising that someone who continually drives home the need for a rigorous, logical approach to appraising opportunities and situations places "gut instinct" as the final judge, as I do. Gut instinct should not be viewed as some kind of unreliable, knee-jerk reaction. It is actually a highly-evolved process by which the human brain applies the most efficient route to making a decision based on experience and knowledge.

This does not mean that gut instincts are always right, as previous experiences play a part: it is no coincidence that the people I consider to have great gut instinct also have a pretty rigorous approach to reviewing outcomes and in considering what should be done differently next time. All this helps your brain in the filing process and improves the reliability of initial or gut reactions.

Whether the filed experience is your "own" or "others" also has a bearing; it is always better to rely on own experience rather than reported, which is likely to be told with the reporter's take or "spin" on it. Again, those with good gut instincts tend to be self-reliant individuals keener to learn from their own experiences than live their life through others.

Most of the business leaders I know use their gut instincts to help make decisions all the time, whereas I often find those stuck in middle-management are those most anxious to gather loads of information to help justify their decision if it all goes wrong. Too little information is clearly bad, but too much can be equally lethal in causing a person, team or organisation to freeze, stagnate and lose purpose.

Every business should make sure all the important information is at hand, but in truth it is virtually impossible to have all the information on any topic at any time. The ability to form a view not only on the information we have, but more importantly on the information we do not have, is what sets us apart and makes us far superior in our decision-making than machines are ever likely to be.

Bob Goodson, co-founder, YouNoodle

Imagine you apply for your next travel insurance policy and are asked to meet an agent in person. You don your sharpest attire, talk about your more conservative hobbies, and present photographs of past holidays. When it's over the agent has a warm sensation emanating from their gut and uses it to help set your rate.

This scenario may be laughable in an age where computers help manage risk successfully in many diverse industries. Yet in 2007 more than $67bn was invested in start-ups in the US alone without the use of standardised scoring systems or quantitative models. So what is "gut instinct"? And why do we humans continue to have faith in it for tasks it is unsuitable to fulfill?

Some parts of the brain are adapted for lightning-fast decisions. Most correlate with visual recognition. You assess beauty in a human face in 0.1 seconds, spot outliers in complex visual patterns in 0.5 seconds, and drive to work safely each day by trusting your visual instincts.

Furthermore, you can quickly process information collected from experience to help make decisions. As evolving mammals this was no doubt useful for survival. So the gut instinct that an investor feels when meeting an entrepreneur is a kind of data analysis. After all, we have no reason to think evolution has equipped us with special business insights that transcend personal experience. So this data, at best, includes a few dozen detailed examples, is ignorant of many important factors, as well as outcomes, and skewed by years of unrelated experiences.

Compare that to the kind of data we can access about start-ups through YouNoodle, which has studied more than 3,000 start-ups, testing the variables to assess impact on outcomes that matter. I do not believe computers are ready to replace humans in investment decisions. But there is a need for more scientific data collection and analysis before an investor can use gut instinct.