We open the book with sketches of some of the current problems with American business. Too many companies since the late 1990s have shown little or no organic growth, masking their problems with mergers and acquisitions, downsizing and reengineering. Marketing is the engine that drives growth, but the engine is in desperate need of an overhaul. And a major problem we see is testosterone decision making - usually male chief marketing officers advertising directors, and brand managers choosing among alternatives quickly, decisively, and without real information. It's the manly way to screw up.

They tell us that their decisions are intuitively appealing. To us this means that it is the same decision everyone else would make. It's the commonsensical thing to do. Yet our research and experience suggest that decisions made on intuition alone rarely lead to successful outcomes. We instead believe that counterintuitive thinking grounded in rigorous analysis of unimpeachable data is the key to success in marketing.