Building Behavioral Science in an Organization - Softcover

Khan, Zarak; Newman, Laurel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1736652508 ISBN 13: 9781736652503

Publisher: Action Design Press, 2021

Synopsis

As applied behavioral science has become more widespread, a need has emerged for guidance on how to build and integrate behavioral science functions within an organization. This book draws on the collective wisdom of applied behavioral scientists with deep experience within their respective practice areas to provide practical guidance on building a behavioral science function that has a meaningful impact for your organization.

About this title

About the Author

As part of the non-profit Action Design Network, Action Design Press shares the mission of making behavioral science more accessible to people. Founded in 2012, Action Design Network has grown to over 18,000 members across the world. Members include everyone from casual observers, to behavioral scientists in training, to established academics and practitioners. To serve this diverse and growing group of people, we organize events, host a podcast, and provide resources that meet members' distinct needs. This book is another resource for practitioners, the very need for which is a strong signal of the growth and success of the field.

From the Back Cover

This book represents the collective experience of several behavioral science experts. We are grateful to the following authors for contributing their knowledge.

Matthew Battersby
Matt Battersby is Chief Behavioral Scientist at the Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) where he focuses on applying behavioral science to issues of health and financial wellbeing. Matt was previously Managing Director and head of the behavioral science team at Hill + Knowlton Strategies. Matt has a Master of Science (MSc) in Behavioural Science from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Bristol.

Kristen Berman
Kristen Berman is co-founder and CEO of Irrational Labs. Irrational Labs is a leading Silicon Valley behavioral research and design consultancy, working with the world's most influential businesses and institutions.

Charlotte Blank
As chief behavioral officer of Maritz, Charlotte Blank leads the incentive firm's psychological expertise in designing effective sales channel and employee performance programs. Ever-curious about "what makes us work," Charlotte forges the connection between academic theory and business application by championing field experimentation as a means to unleash workforce potential.

Linnea Gandhi
Linnea Gandhi teaches, researches, and consults on how to integrate behavioral theories and experimentation into business settings. She founded BehavioralSight to help professionals become better architects of their employees', their customers', and their own behaviors. Also affiliated with both Chicago Booth and Wharton, Linnea is currently working on two problem areas: (1) building a phenotype of effective nudges and (2) improving our ability to learn from error.

Nicole Grabel
Nicole Grabel is a Principal of Behavioral Science at BehavioralSight. Previously working in brand strategy, she now helps clients apply behavioral science principles to help them make more informed decisions when it comes to their consumers, their organizations, and themselves.

Erik Johnson
Erik Johnson is the founder of Behavioral Strategies LLC, where he uses behavioral methods to help organizations improve product and marketing performance and enhance organizational decision-making capabilities. Previously, he co-created ProductPsychology.com and held roles at ideas42 and Morningstar.

Meghann Johnson
Meghann Johnson is a Principal of Behavioral Science at BehavioralSight and the Director of Behavioral Intervention Design and User Experience at the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. She gets excited about using behavioral science to inform decision processes and testing through experimentation, both in RCTs and to applied business problems in the field.

Zarak Khan
Zarak Khan is a behavioral scientist with experience generating and applying insights to organizational strategy, innovation infrastructure, product design, public policy, process improvement, and program management. He is a Senior Behavioral Researcher at the Center for Advanced Hindsight, a Behavioral Science Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and a board member of Action Design Network.

Rachelle Martino
Rachelle is a partner at BehavioralSight. Years of experience in management consulting and industry has left a deep appreciation and passion for the challenges and opportunities that await those who seek to employ behavioral science in the business setting. She enjoys seeing ideas brought to life through application and real-world pressure testing.

Laurel Newman
Laurel Newman is a behavioral scientist at Edward Jones. A former college professor, she now works with teams throughout the organization to improve the experiences of clients and employees by applying behavioral science principles and testing their impact.

Namika Sagara
Namika Sagara is a Co-Founder and Chief Behavioral Officer at Syntoniq, where she leads R&D for Tech and also is building and leading the Consulting team. Prior to Syntoniq, Dr. Sagara was a Founder and President of the industry's first Behavioral Science Center at Ipsos. Before her time at Ipsos, she was a President of Sagara Consulting, a postdoc and a visiting scholar at Duke University, and a research consultant at Center for Behavioral Finance at Allianz Global Investors.

Greg Szwartz
Greg is the healthcare data science practice lead at Deloitte Consulting. He has over 25 years of experience putting models and algorithms into life sciences and healthcare workflow - either strategic decisions around product development or capacity planning, or in operational workflow related to care management and patient support.

Steve Wendel
Dr. Wendel is the head of Behavioral Science at Morningstar, where his team develops and tests practical techniques to help people overcome common behavioral obstacles in their finances. Steve is the author of three books on applied behavioral science and founder of the non-profit Action Design Network. He has two wonderful kids and a wife who don't care about behavioral science at all.

Scott Young
Scott Young is a Senior Vice President of the BVA Group. He assumed this role after 20 years leading PRS (Perception Research Services) and later PRS IN VIVO, a Top-25 global shopper insights agency. Scott is passionate about finding "win-win-win" opportunities (that benefit companies, consumers and society) - and in applying behavioral science to help individuals and organizations make better decisions and adopt healthier, more sustainable habits.

From the Inside Flap

Behavioral science is an umbrella term that includes social psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, and other academic disciplines. It can be applied to a variety of practice areas within an organization via a range of design and measurement tactics. It can influence strategy and design throughout an organization, including such areas as product design, marketing and communications, employee and customer engagement, and strategic decision making.

In practice people often end up specializing in one area or another, but applied behavioral science includes both designing for the moment (the domain of nudges and cognitive biases) as well as creating the broader context for shaping the thoughts, emotions, and behavioral patterns of employees and customers.

As applied behavioral science has become more widespread, a need has emerged for guidance on how to build and integrate behavioral science functions within an organization. This book attempts to provide some guidance by drawing on the collective wisdom of applied behavioral scientists with deep experience within their respective practice areas. It is meant to be a quick start guide for both organization leaders and behavioral scientists on where and how to integrate behavioral science into your organization.

The first two sections highlight the growth of applied behavioral science and key practice areas within an organization where it can be employed. Ideally this provides some guidance to organization leaders, for instance a VP of Marketing or Chief Innovation Officer, on why behavioral science is useful and how to integrate it into their respective area. The final section details key considerations in setting up and growing a behavioral science function, and would be useful to both organizational champions and the behavioral science leaders tasked with implementation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Action Design Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1736652508
• ISBN 13: 9781736652503
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140