Lessons from the frontline of corporate nudging

If you’re serious about setting up a behavioral-science team—or a nudge unit, as we’ll more colloquially refer to it in this article—you need to ask yourself some tough questions, such as what it should do, where it should sit, how you’ll know it’s succeeding, and whether you’re ready for the ethical tensions it may raise.

Subtle interventions to help people make better decisions are hardly new. Since the 1950s, behavioral scientists, using a mix of economics and psychology, have studied human irrationality and devised ways both to improve the choices made by consumers and influence how employees react in the workplace. Increasingly, over the past two decades, companies have used the insights of behavioral science to reduce bias in boardrooms, improve strategic decision making, provide benefits for customers, enhance the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and avoid making bad bets on major acquisitions or investments.