MORE THAN A DECADE after the publication of Nudge, the organizational relevance of insights from Behavioural Science is no longer questioned. But in terms of applying these insights, two challenges remain. The first relates to creating organizations that truly understand the science and embed it deeply within their structures and methods. The second challenge is one of scaling: How can we ensure that the results of experiments and pilots successfully scale into interventions that reliably improve consumer welfare? In this article, we will focus on the latter and identify three specific scaling challenges.
First, one of the biggest themes from the research is the notion of context dependence. We now know that numerous elements in a given context (e.g., the medium of the message, the time of day, information framing and ambient factors, to name a few) influence peoples’ choices. A rich literature of preference reversals has shown, for example, that consumer preferences can reverse with seemingly irrelevant changes to the context. For business leaders and policymakers, the implication is clear: the fact that a particular intervention worked well in one particular context does not guarantee its success in a completely different context.
Second, the lack of diversity of pilot-study participants poses a real challenge. While it is important to understand the efficacy of an intervention among a representative group, it is equally important to understand the heterogeneity of the population. Small-scale studies may
