The Crown Estate Company Profile
Founded in 2010, the Behavioural Insights Team has grown from a seven-person unit at the heart of the UK government to a global social purpose company of over 200 professionals across many offices around the world.
In December 2021 we became wholly-owned by innovation charity Nesta.
Throughout this growth and expansion our mission has remained the same. We create and apply behavioural insights to drive positive change and help people, communities and organisations thrive.
We do this by developing better systems, policies, products and services. We apply an evidence-based understanding of human behaviour and find out what works, for whom, and when.
The values that guide us in our work are:
- Social impact
- Empiricism and humility
- Fresh thinking and intellectual curiosity
- Collaboration
- Lasting partnerships
We have run more than 1000 projects to date, including over 700 randomised controlled trials in dozens of countries.
We have a track record of success across a range of areas and types of clients. We also work to scale our successful interventions by sharing lessons learned, publishing our work in regular policy reports and in peer-reviewed academic publications and supporting wider adoption of effective frameworks, such as EAST and MINDSPACE.
Our international panel of world-leading academic affiliates includes Professor Richard Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, and Theresa Marteau, director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. We also have a formal partnership with Harvard University’s Behavioral Insights Group (BIG) and close relationships with several universities, including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, UCL and University of Pennsylvania