Bart De Langhe

When it comes to generating new ideas and building customer loyalty, KU Leuven and Vlerick Business School Professor Bart De Langhe (deh-LONG) offers businesses a unique approach to success at the intersection of humans and AI.

A behavioral scientist and data analyst named among the Best 40-Under-40 Professors of 2021 by Poets and Quants, De Langhe applies interpretive thinking (the human part) to data (the AI part) so that companies can optimize their resources when composing, decomposing, innovating and delivering on new ideas. As a multidisciplinary expert in behavioral economics, human psychology, marketing and data analysis, De Langhe helps companies not just read data, but have it lead them toward their ideal customers and what those customers want.

“If you understand how the mind works and how the data works, you can optimize any area of business including monetization, innovation, pricing, customer relations and more,” says De Langhe.

Rather than simply looking at numbers and analytics, De Langhe identifies behavioral patterns embedded in data, revealing the driving forces behind customer decision making. Recognized by the Marketing Science Institute as one of the most promising young scholars in marketing, De Langhe says the best investment any company can make is to develop a better understanding of how to interpret and process the data they collect.

“Data, machines and algorithms alone don’t lead to optimal decisions,” says De Langhe. “You need experienced analysts who know how to read the data, ask the right questions, segment, visualize and utilize it in optimal ways. If you don’t understand how the mapping of your metrics relates to the outcome, you’re blindly adopting transformations that don’t make sense.”

As seen in his TEDxEsade talk, De Langhe also challenges the notion that companies should react to online reviews when trying to serve customers. Instead he encourages businesses to move in the opposite direction by first identifying customers who are of value to them, then seeking to satisfy those (and similar) consumers by delivering products and services they need. His distinct frameworks for problem solving, decision making and developing new ideas draw on the logic of segmenting, decomposing and recomposing elements in order to create something “useful” to a valued customer.

When businesses struggle to understand why consumers don’t buy their products or services, De Langhe shows them how that is often related to decision environments. To help leaders think differently about their innovation processes, De Langhe’s Harvard Business Review articles, “The Dangers of Categorical Thinking” (2019) and “Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World” (2017), warn that categorical thinking – the process by which our brain takes in, deciphers and simplifies information – can impair decision-making across various functional areas of an organization and that assumptions of linear relationships can lead to rampant productivity losses.

Ultimately, De Langhe shows companies how to leverage the best of what humans and machines have to offer. The key to success, he says, lies in optimizing the distribution of human work and machine work so operations run smoothly while ideas flow freely.

Bart De Langhe is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.