How Our Company Learned to Make Better Predictions About Everything

It’s a skill that can be taught.

"Research from organizational psychologist Philip Tetlock, the co-author of Superforecasting, suggests an alternative. Studying forecasting tournaments where anonymous experts predicted future events, Tetlock found that some forecasters could consistently predict better than others. Rather than possessing some innate talent, so-called “superforecasters” demonstrate what Tetlock describes as a “growth mindset,” or a willingness to learn from past mistakes and continually update their theoretical priors. Our ability to predict, like any other skill, can improve with practice.

At Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon, we saw the promise in this research. If an individual can gain a predictive edge, so can a company...

It’s a skill that can be taught.

"Research from organizational psychologist Philip Tetlock, the co-author of Superforecasting, suggests an alternative. Studying forecasting tournaments where anonymous experts predicted future events, Tetlock found that some forecasters could consistently predict better than others. Rather than possessing some innate talent, so-called “superforecasters” demonstrate what Tetlock describes as a “growth mindset,” or a willingness to learn from past mistakes and continually update their theoretical priors. Our ability to predict, like any other skill, can improve with practice.

At Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon, we saw the promise in this research. If an individual can gain a predictive edge, so can a company...