The art of the business-plan pitch could fill volumes of business-school literature. But what if the real secret sauce had less to do with content and everything to do with delivery?

Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, director of MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, has conducted research around the power of unconscious forms of communication. The tools have revealed subtle patterns in how people interact, enabling Pentland and his colleagues to predict outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates to pitches for funding.

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