Our plan for the future
To date, much of our work has been intentional, but a fair share has been reactive, responding and adapting as best we could to continue to grow and serve our partners.
This has pushed us in new and exciting directions, and we have launched Busara offices in Kenya, Nigeria, India, Uganda, and Tanzaniato build a global community dedicated to transparency and rigor in behavioral science.
For this next phase of our organization’s development, we want to focus on the most important challenges facing behavioral science. Our mission statement, which has guided Busara since its incorporation, remains: to work with researchers and organizations to advance and apply behavioral science in pursuit of poverty alleviation. Our strategy in order to fulfill this mission is to bridge the gap between research and application by becoming the world leader in deploying behavioral science teams within organizations.
Ultimately, we believe this strategy will initiate new possibilities
we hope to see realized, some examples below:
The next generation of global behavioral scientists build lasting relationships by working together within organisations and academic institutions, and consequently embed behavioral science across the world
A global network of “nudge” units enables public sector innovation in the Global South, where learnings are shared and best practices continually improved, setting the example for the international community
Academics are valued on their ability to do good science that helps organizations make decisions (not on their academic pedigree or their connections within the community)
Consumers are better served by organizations are who prioritizing behavioral science in their product and program strategy to the benefit of these consumers
Building teams
When teams operate outside of an organization, they are inherently limited in the value they can generate for the organization, as well as the potential opportunities they can provide for the researchers. “Building teams”, as outlined in our strategy, can include a number of possibilities:
Selecting, training and placing talented behavioral scientists into organizations who hire them.
Embedding Busara team members within an organisation, training and capacity building full time staff to create an embedded unit.
Setting up world-class decision labs in collaboration with academic institutions across the Global South