Nesta is working towards three ambitious mission goals: a fairer start for every child; a healthy life for all, and a sustainable future where the economy works better for people and the planet.

Evidence and experimentation play a crucial role in achieving our goals. We use robust evaluation methods to generate evaluative evidence. We focus on experimental and non-experimental designs to help find solutions to social problems we care about. We seek to explain why an innovation has or has not been successful, what factors have contributed to a result and what lessons we can learn about research and practice. We are also interested in generating knowledge and evidence on how to manage the process of scaling to ensure that promising innovations successfully scale up their impact. We do this by working closely with diverse teams at Nesta but also with a network of external partners.

We also facilitate effective evidence use to ensure that the existing body of evidence informs our understanding of how to best achieve our mission goals. We help to establish systems, methods and procedures both internally and externally to build individual, team, and institutional capability to understand what good – and good enough – evidence for decision-making means in practice. We work in close partnership with both Capabilities in Academic-Policy Engagement and Civil Service Learning to share this expertise with the wider sector.

If you would like to discuss working with our evidence and experimentation team please get in touch by emailing [email protected]

To find out more about experimentation specific to innovation and growth policy visit the Innovation Growth Lab, a specialist enterprise led by Nesta in collaboration with government partners that works globally to promote experimentation and ensure that innovation and growth policy is informed by new ideas and robust evidence.