We are here for the people who believe in breakthroughs. Who think in possibilities rather than limitations. Who would rather put their energy into progress than into explaining why progress is impossible. And who want to discover how Behavioural Design can help make it happen.
Cynicism is the easiest position in any room. It costs nothing, risks nothing, and is almost always wrong about what is possible. “That will never work.” “We have tried that already.” Those are not insights. They are a refusal to look properly.
An enormous amount is already going well in the world. People in technology, healthcare, urban planning and education are quietly solving problems we were told were unsolvable. Almost none of it reaches us. We receive a constant stream of what is breaking down, and almost nothing of what is being built.
The stubborn optimist refuses to accept the status quo and does the work. Not the dreamer who hopes things will improve, not the cynic who is certain they will not. The person in between, which is harder to be than either. Someone who looks at a stuck situation and does not ask whether it can be different, but how.
And we want to contribute to this by giving as many people as possible the tools of behavioural science. So that you do not only think in possibilities, but also see them become reality. In your organisation, your team, your personal life, or the world around you.
Read the full article →Each article takes a stubborn problem and looks for the place in the world where someone has already solved it. And what behavioural science tells us about why it worked.
This is the blog series I have had in my head for years. Not as inspiration content. As a search. Each article is a question: where has someone already solved this? And what does that tell us about how behaviour really works, and how you can design it?
Behind all those questions sits the same conviction: behaviour is not fate. It is a design choice. And anyone who shares that conviction can learn the tools to do something with it.
Learn to apply it yourself →
The Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side: a chair, a view, a name on a screen. A masterclass in possible-selves design.
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How do you change human behaviour without trying to change the human? The starting point for everything we do.
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Progress speeds up exponentially. So optimism is a conclusion from the data, and the behavioural designer a stubborn optimist.
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Vittra Telefonplan in Stockholm has no classrooms. Five types of space instead of one. The curiosity followed naturally.
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Bogotá closes 120 km of main roads to cars every Sunday. Two million people take to the streets, without a campaign, a fine or a reward.
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Eataly built its reputation on the opposite of every retail instinct. Smaller baskets, slower shoppers, higher satisfaction.
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Maggie's Centres gave the building a role in cancer care. Lower anxiety, greater sense of control. Not despite the architecture. Because of it.
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Buurtzorg runs 10,000+ nurses in self-managing teams with no managers. The engagement is not a culture story. It is a design story.
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When two Fortune 500 companies removed their walls, face-to-face interaction fell seventy per cent. The fix is counterintuitive: add boundaries, not remove them.
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Roger Ulrich's 1984 study found that patients with a window view of trees left hospital a day earlier and needed fewer painkillers. The environment was the treatment.
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For decades, a Pennsylvania town had strikingly low rates of heart disease despite unhealthy habits. The protection was not inside the people. It lived between them.
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Swedish skateparks draw young people outside not by banning screens, but by matching what screens offer: excitement, social feedback, and visible progression.
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Japan's Silver Human Resource Centres match retired people to real local work. The wellbeing followed not from recreation but from being genuinely needed.
Read the article →If you believe behaviour can be designed, the next step is learning how. Our training programmes give you the methods, the tools and the practice to turn that conviction into real change.
Refuse to accept that the way things have always been done is the way they must continue. Who do not believe in “that will never work” or “we have tried that already”. Who know that cynicism is easy, and that it gets you nowhere.
Who think in “what if?” instead of “yes, but”. What if we looked at this differently? What if we treated a problem as an interesting starting point? What if we saw it from another angle? What if we put our energy into progress?
And that is what we want to talk about. Not because we are naive, but because the examples are there. Because optimism is not a denial of problems. It is a choice about where you direct your energy.
Not for everything. Not always. But for far more than people think. Decades of research into how people really decide, what moves them, why we do what we do and why habits stick. How changing context shapes choices and behaviour. That knowledge exists. Those insights are real.
We make them accessible, usable and tangible. Not as tricks. Not as manipulation. As instruments for positive change. For breakthroughs that matter:
We are evidence-based optimists. We work with data, with experiments, with iteration. We test, we measure, we learn. Always with the conviction that things can be better. That is not soft. That is stubborn. Stubbornly holding on to the idea that progress is possible. That behaviour can be designed. That small changes can have large effects. That the future is made, not fixed.
“There must be a better way…” · “This can be done differently…” · “I believe this is possible…” · “I want to put my energy into progress…”
Then you are in the right place. Then you are a stubborn optimist. Then you are a changemaker. Then you are a professional who gets things moving.
And those are exactly the people we give the tools of behavioural science. So that you do not only think in possibilities, but also see them become reality. In your organisation, your team, your personal life, or the world around you. Because Behavioural Design takes you further in every part of your work.
Then you are a stubborn optimist. A professional who gets things moving. Those are the people who use the tools of Behavioural Design. So that they do not only think in possibilities, but can see ideas become reality. In organisations, teams, personal lives, or the world around them.
