Increasing buy-in for behavioural research: are investors the key?

Why hire us, then not listen to us?

In our recent research into behavioural research in startups, we found that even when behavioural researchers had been hired into (often quite small) businesses, they were still experiencing issues with getting buy-in for their work. This showed up as findings having less impact, and difficulty getting resources allocated to do thorough behavioural research. But what’s driving it, and how can we fix it? This post explores our findings and recommendations around this, drawing parallels with Scott Young’s recent article exploring similar issues across the private sector, largely in corporates. 

Behavioural science may have an image problem

We heard in our research that behavioural research was loosely defined, and when it was clear, the conceptualisation people had was problematic.  We went into the research with a specific definition of behavioural research, as:

Research that aims to understand what influences, characterises, changes or results from people’s individual or collective behaviour – particularly that draws upon theories, frameworks, and existing evidence from the behavioural science literature.

However, the behavioural researchers we spoke to defined it much more loosely, as any research which seeks to understand or investigate behaviour, what contributes to it, or how it can be changed. Most felt that this wasn’t specifically differentiated from other types of startup research (e.g. user research, market research). This was also highlighted in the fact that the behavioural researchers’ roles encompassed many tasks beyond behavioural research, with only 20% spending most of their time on it. While being across other business areas might overall increase the impact of behavioural research, there certainly seems to be an issue of definition. Scott Young also discussed this issue, highlighting that the muti-purpose, all encompassing nature of behavioural research can make it less clear than other functions such as marketing, which may impact business leaders’ ability to understand and thus prioritise it.

When leaders in startups did understand behavioural research, some had negative perceptions of behavioural research, for example that it makes unachievable claims, or has a reputation for reducing autonomy. Some had unrealistic expectations, believing that behavioural science should be able to offer a “quick fix”, rather than it being an in-depth process. Again, Scott Young acknowledged this issue in the corporate sector, stating that there is a risk that popularised behavioural science literature has exacerbated this perception (e.g. Nudge, Atomic Habits). 

Overall, it’s difficult to achieve buy-in for something which is not well-defined or understood, or where expectations do not match the reality. However, a bigger issue for behavioural research is that in resource-limited environments, it often just isn’t a priority.

Resources are limited, and commercial goals are often prioritised over impact goals. 

Startups & scaleups are not the most resource-rich environments when it comes to time, money, and labour available. The result is that prioritising time and funding for behavioural research can be challenging. Many behavioural researchers are familiar with balancing rigour with speed and minimal resources required in such a setting; however, even scraping together the resources required for this lightweight research could be a challenge. This is exacerbated by ventures often prioritising measurement of engagement and commercial goals, over behavioural or impact outcomes. Our participants were also acutely aware of the shifts in the job market, with many researchers being made redundant. 

Put simply, in a very resource-constrained environment, ventures will always (understandably) need to prioritise income and runway over conducting research. However, this does not make for a sustainable business in the long-term, if they are not producing products that ultimately “work” and achieve product market fit – and some researchers acknowledged the value of research in saving time and money in the long run (by avoiding building the wrong thing). 

“I mean, it’s always a resource issue. Compared to my last company where I had four behavioural scientists on my team. In this company I’m an individual contributor, which means I’m setting the strategy, but also delivering on all of it so resource issues I would say. I just can’t do as much being one person. It’s the reality of it.” 

“Our organisation uses very different types of success metrics. It’s more I would say they are more usage-based to be honest so how many customers use the product when it’s released. That’s how they would define success but to me – I wouldn’t personally as a behavioural scientist say that’s success because it’s not fundamentally anything to do with the outcome that the customer is using the product for.” 

How can we fix it? 

Addressing buy-in can allow ventures to take full advantage of behavioural research, use it towards both impact and commercial goals, and not waste time on research that doesn’t get implemented. 

A common response to this challenge of a lack of buy-in is that we should support behavioural researchers in better communicating or “selling” their work into the business (as advocated by Scott Young). This is important; however, it feels somewhat like a sticking plaster on a much bigger systemic issue (and, dare I say, placing the responsibility on the “victim” of the issue rather than addressing the root causes). 

We could think about embedding behavioural research into other roles. This is already happening to some extent, as we saw in the diversity of tasks undertaken by those participating in our study. One may think that embedding behavioural research into other roles (e.g. UX research, product design, product management) may enhance its impact as it doesn’t require specific “buy-in”, but can be undertaken as part of existing work – almost “covert” behavioural research. However, this implies that individuals would have the time, capacity or resources to include behavioural research into their role. Additionally, buy-in can often also be a challenge for these other business functions, particularly the fundamental “behavioural research” tasks like research and experimentation, which suggests that this won’t fully solve the problem.

There is definitely an opportunity for improved conceptualisation and branding of behavioural research. However, the most impactful solution would likely be a shift in systemic incentives. Currently, ventures are prioritising commercial goals and runway – understandably, as this keeps the business afloat. But what if that runway was inextricably linked to behavioural outcomes? We know that some impact investors already require reporting of impact outcomes as a condition of investment (e.g. Ananda Impact Ventures). Investors could perhaps go further in supporting and setting expectations for behavioural research. Given that ventures are reliant on investment, we hope that this will provide a strong signal, as well as support and capital, to ensure that behavioural research is not only conducted within ventures, but also has the greatest impact.