How our company learned to make better predictions about everything

Abstract

We all make bets about the future, whether we call them that or not. We select a career based on perceptions about its prospects; we take on projects based on what we think we can accomplish; we hire employees based on how we predict they will perform. We don’t have an option not to make predictions in our work lives, but we do have an option to try and make better ones. At Twitch, employees have worked to create a culture of forecasting based on the research of Philip Tetlock. Although employees were skeptical at first, most have come to embrace the practice of making frequent numerical forecasts.