How is sensitive data protected?

All documents are encrypted with AES-256-GCM at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit. A GDPR anonymization layer removes PII before any AI processing. Hosted on Vercel + Supabase (both SOC 2 Type II); Decision Intel’s own product-level audit is targeted for Q4 2026.

How long does integration take?

Less than 30 minutes. Upload documents directly, connect via OAuth for Slack, or use our REST API for bulk processing.

How does outcome tracking work?

Outcomes are detected automatically from follow-up documents, Slack messages, and web intelligence. You confirm with one click. Each reported outcome makes your future analyses more accurate.

How is Decision Intel different from ChatGPT or a general AI assistant?

ChatGPT gives one opinion from one model: ungoverned, untraceable, unaudited. Decision Intel is the reasoning audit platform. Most tools audit your data; we audit your reasoning — and catch the fatal blind spots in strategic memos before the committee does. It measures the noise in your reasoning the same way Kahneman did in the insurance underwriter study, simulates an AI boardroom of CEO, CFO, and board personas, runs what-if interventions against a 143-case public reference library, and compounds every confirmed outcome back into a calibrated Decision Quality Index your audit committee can defend. Not a chatbot; a reasoning audit, checkable from memo to outcome.

Which cognitive biases caused Sears Holdings (Sears/Kmart)'s collapse?

5 bias patterns are documented in this case, led by Overconfidence Bias. The full set: Overconfidence Bias, Confirmation Bias, Anchoring Bias, Authority Bias, Framing Effect. Each is mapped to Decision Intel's 22-bias R²F taxonomy with stable IDs and academic citations.

What is Decision Intel's reasoning audit?

Decision Intel runs a 12-node Recognition-Rigor Framework (R²F) pipeline on strategic memos, detecting cognitive biases from a 22-bias canonical taxonomy and producing a Decision Quality Index (DQI) score. The audit produces a hashed, tamper-evident Decision Provenance Record (DPR) suitable for audit-committee review.

All case studies

Catastrophic failureRetail2018

Sears Holdings (Sears/Kmart)

Sears Holdings Collapse

Estimated impact: $12B+ in market value; 200,000+ jobs over decline period

F14

Decision Quality Index (simulated)

Critical · 5 biases detected, 3 toxic combinations

CEO Eddie Lampert applied hedge fund financial engineering to retail operations, stripping assets and creating internal competition between divisions rather than investing in customer experience or e-commerce.

Decision context

Lampert restructured Sears into competing business units that bid against each other for resources, applied short-term financial metrics to long-term retail decisions, and sold off Lands' End, Craftsman, and real estate while stores deteriorated.

Decision anatomy

Monetary stakes

Very high

Dissent suppressed

Yes

Time pressure

None

Unanimous consensus

Yes

Decision participants

Dissent encouraged

External advisors

Iterative process

Red = risk factor present · Green = protective factor present

Decision Intel Platform Analysis

Source: Strategy Document · 2015-04

The analysis below was produced from the pre-decision document only. No hindsight. This is what the platform would have surfaced if it had been running in 2015-04.

Strategy Document · 2015-04

“Eddie Lampert's restructuring of Sears Holdings from 2008 onward split the company into 30+ internal business units (BUs) that would 'compete' with each other for resources and transact at internal transfer prices. Lampert personally authorized the structure and required the BUs to negotiate bilateral agreements. Financial engineering accelerated through 2012-2018: Lands' End spin-off (2014, $4.6B value extracted), Craftsman brand sold to Stanley Black & Decker (2017, $900M), Seritage REIT spin-off of 235 stores (2015) at above-market rents lease-back to Sears — effectively a cash extraction disguised as a real-estate transaction.”

Source: Sears Holdings SEC filings 2008-2018; ESL Investments letters to Sears shareholders; David Dayen reporting (The American Prospect); Bankruptcy Court SDNY Case 18-23538

Red flags detectable at decision time

30+ internal BUs competing via transfer pricing — destroying operational coordination for merchandising
Seritage REIT transaction extracted $2.7B cash while saddling Sears with above-market lease obligations
Store maintenance capex dropped to <$100M/year on 700+ stores — visible operational decay
Lampert simultaneously CEO, Chairman, and largest creditor via ESL — concentrating governance conflicts
Customer-experience metrics declined consistently 2010-2018 without triggering strategic reconsideration

Cognitive biases the platform would have flagged

Overconfidence BiasAuthority BiasConfirmation BiasFraming Effect

Hypothetical analysis

DI would flag the Sears decision process as the canonical authority-bias + financial-engineering-frame failure. Lampert's hedge-fund success (ESL's Kmart turnaround) created a halo that insulated subsequent decisions from retail-operational scrutiny. A bias-adjusted review would have treated the 30-BU internal-competition structure as an operational red flag requiring independent retail-industry benchmarking — no other successful retailer operates this way. The concentration of CEO, Chairman, and largest-creditor roles in one person should have triggered mandatory independent directors with enhanced authority.