About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

This event took place on Wednesday 20 March. You can watch the recording below.

Each of us makes decisions each day. Even the low-stakes decisions add up and the more we understand what influences them, the more we can design the world - and our own lives - to support better choices.

At Nesta, changing behaviours is key to achieving our mission goals: we want to empower consumers to switch to low-carbon heating, design food environments in a way that supports people in making healthier choices and create the right conditions for practitioners and parents to be able to support children in the first crucial years of their life.

How can we change behaviours at scale? Elspeth Kirkman, Chief Programme Officer at Nesta, has recently launched her new book, Decisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making. Decisionscape brings together the realms of art and science to explore what drives our decision-making and how we can use these forces for good. It borrows four techniques used by artists - diminution, viewpoint, composition, and framing - to mitigate the invisible biases that threaten the quality of our decisions.

Elspeth joined Elisabeth Costa, Managing Director at the Behavioural Insights Team UK, to share insights from her book and explore the potential of decision-making for public good.

When registering for the event, you will be entered into a prize draw with the chance to win a free copy of Elspeth’s book. Winners will be announced after the event.

Why you should watch the recording

This event is for anyone interested in the interface between art and science who wants to learn about behavioural science and human psychology. You might work in policy, innovation, social sciences, or are just interested in the role of decision-making as a force for good.

The event will be held at our Nesta offices, 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS and also streamed online.

Decisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making is available to buy online at Bookshop.org, Waterstones and Amazon.

The opinions expressed in this event recording are those of the speaker. For more information, view our full statement on external contributors.

Speakers

Lis Costa Heashot

Elisabeth Costa

Elisabeth is the Managing Director of the Behavioural Insights Team in the UK and a Director of the BIT Global Board. Elisabeth leads BIT’s work in the United Kingdom and is responsible for building new, long-term partnerships and collaborations across the team. Elisabeth’s particular expertise is economic policy and digital markets. Joining the team in 2015, Elisabeth has developed and led the team’s flagship programmes on the intersection of behavioural science and economic policy. Alongside leading dozens of trials and experiments, she has co-authored papers on Consumer Decision Making in Regulated Markets (2016), Household Finance (2018), Online Harms and Manipulation (2019), Business Behaviours (2019) and the Behavioural Economy (2020). Elisabeth regularly contributes to policy discussions and public debate on digital markets and online decision-making, financial behaviour and consumer vulnerability. Elisabeth is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. Prior to joining the Behavioural Insights Team, Elisabeth held senior roles at the Australian Treasury and completed her postgraduate studies at Harvard Law School.