Understanding intuition: the case for two forms of intuition

Since the recent rejuvenation of intuition research within the management literature, significant work has been done on conceptualizing intuition. Whilst remarkable progress has been achieved concerning many aspects of intuition, the role of intuition in creativity remains comparatively under-researched. Through an extensive review of intuition literature, including but also going beyond the management field, we believe that a reason for this could be that intuition in the management literature is generally conceptualized as judgement. In this paper we aim to extend our understanding of intuition in creativity by introducing the concept of intuitive insight. Augmenting the literature and further strengthening the case this paper builds off two previous research projects. The first project focuses on presenting a comprehensive set of features of intuition based on the literature and the second builds a conceptual model of knowledge types. Further informing the research presented in this paper is Polanyi’s distinction of focal and subsidiary awareness. These four considerations lead us to propose that there are two kinds of intuition – intuitive judgement and intuitive insight.