The Triangle Health Innovation Challenge completed their 2017 event this past weekend at Duke University, organized by the Duke School of Medicine Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activity Group, and the Carolina Health Entrepreneurship Initiative. Over the course of 48 hours, THInC mobilized teams around specific healthcare “pain points”, and challenged them to create solutions.

The winning pitch came from OptiML—over the course of the THInC weekend, the team created an app and iPhone add-on designed to diagnose glaucoma. Congratulations to the THInC team for a successful weekend, and to the event’s top solution, OptiML!

The Center for Advanced Hindsight is a proud sponsor of THInC, as a premier health innovation hackathon in our community that brings together students and practitioners to spark ideas for high-impact healthcare solutions. We support collaboration across diverse minds, departments, and professions– the next great solutions for societal good won’t come from any one place. THInC does a wonderful job of breaking down barriers to collaboration and providing a forum for collective problem solving.

Those passionate about creating solutions that enhance people’s lives are deserving of our support. It is an important part of the CAH’s mission to help design a future that improves human decision-making to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier.

The post The Triangle Health Innovation Challenge 2017 appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

San Ramon, Calif. – June 8, 2017 – Research-backed employee financial wellness company Retiremap today unveiled the first financial coaching platform combining human coaching with robo-advisor capabilities. Developed in tandem with Duke University’s Common Cents Lab, the new Retiremap Platform leverages behavioral insights to maintain the human element of financial coaching while automating just-in-time communications to enable a scalable financial coaching program at an affordable price.

Designed for employers and financial advisors, the Retiremap System harnesses behavioral economics best practices to promote accountability, goal creation and progress, confidence, and mental accounting by employees. After building and testing live prototypes with Common Cents, the program is currently being rolled out by a number of employers and advisors, including the award-winning retirement plan advisory firm Channel Financial.

According to a study by the Center for Financial Services Innovation, 57% of American adults are struggling financially, and 43% of U.S. households struggle to keep up with their bills and credit payments.

“Our mission is to help more underserved populations tap into critical financial guidance,” said Retiremap CEO Matt Iverson. “It is clear that financial education has failed to impact employee behavior over the last three decades. However by turning retirement plan advisors into financial coaches using automated technology and behavioral strategies, we are moving the needle for the populations that need it most.”

The use of robo-advisors as an alternative to costly and difficult to scale one-to-one financial coaching has grown in popularity and has led to an increase in venture funding for these technologies. However, researchers have shown that financial coaching remains one of the most effective tools for changing financial behavior and promoting financial wellness.

“Numerous studies indicate that financial education has minimal long term effects on changing financial behaviors,” said Channel Financial Partner Matt Gulseth. “Most of the financial wellness programs we evaluated have been based on the faulty premise that education changes employee behaviours. It doesn’t. We are working with Common Cents Lab and Retiremap because they are creating behaviorally sound protocols that change employee behaviors.”

Created in partnership with Common Cents Lab, the Retiremap platform provides the human element of financial coaching while automating personalized email, SMS and in-app communications. Over the course of a year, the Common Cents team evaluated behavioral research around financial decision-making to create an eight week system that harnessed the resulting best practices to promote financial wellness.

“We partnered with Retiremap to develop a scalable and effective robo-advisor as a way to increase savings and financial wellness,” said Common Cents Lab co-founder Kristen Berman. “The result is a platform that removes the complexity from financial decision making and delivers positive, personalized coaching one step at a time.”

To learn more about the Retiremap System, visit http://retiremaphq.com/.

###

About Retiremap

Retiremap is a research-backed social venture focused on helping employees set and achieve their financial goals, particularly those employees experiencing financial stress. Retiremap automates and integrates advisors into the financial wellness program to achieve significantly greater employee behavior change.

To achieve its social impact, Retiremap partners with top plan advisors and recordkeepers seeking to have an outsized, measurable impact on employee behavior.

About Common Cents Lab

The Common Cents Lab, supported by MetLife Foundation, is a financial research lab at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University that creates and tests interventions to help low- to moderate-income households increase their financial well-being. Common Cents leverages research gleaned from behavioral economics to create interventions that lead to positive financial behaviors. The lab is led by Behavioral Economics Professor Dan Ariely and is comprised of researchers and experts in product design, economics, psychology, public policy, advertising, business administration, and more.

To fulfill its mission, Common Cents partners with organizations, including fintech companies, credit unions, banks, and nonprofits, that believe their work could be improved through insights gained from behavioral economics. To learn more about Common Cents Lab visit www.commoncentslab.org.

Press Contact:

Michael Azzano

Cosmo PR

415/596-1978

michael@cosmo-pr.com

The post Retiremap Launches First Platform Combining Human Coaching and Robo-Advisory to Improve Financial Wellness appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

Don’t miss your chance! Startup Lab applications are only open until June 30^th at 5pm EST.

Apply here.

Startups + Behavioral Economics

Since its inception as a primarily theoretical field of study that reunified psychology and economics[1], behavioral economics has been increasingly utilized to inform solutions, alter environments, and design technologies. By applying what we know from the field about how humans behave in reality (rather than the traditional economic view of humans as rational actors that always make decisions in their best interests), more effective solutions have emerged that are more in line with natural human behavior. But there is far more work to be done!

The Center for Advanced Hindsight believes that the findings of behavioral economics should be used to serve society. For better or for worse, designers influence human behavior. In the interest of using behavioral economics for good, we seek and support the solutions that enhance people’s lives.

Solutions that Enhance People’s Lives

In 2015, the United Nations laid out 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a “universal call to action”[2]. These are a prime example of the kinds of goals we care to collectively pursue with our entrepreneurial partners at the CAH. Startups building solutions that contribute to SDG 1, ending poverty, or SDG 3, promoting good health and wellbeing (see The World Health Organization’s graphic[3] below highlighting health) are those that we want to support in integrating behavioral concepts to increase their effectiveness.

The Startup Lab puts BE into the hands of those designing the next solution for the good of others. Entrepreneurs are influencers of the future, and the CAH helps them design a future that improves human decision-making to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier.

The CAH provides an environment where behavioral economics research is accessible and applicable. We provide actionable teaching, create collision between startups and researchers, and enable access to brilliant academic minds (like Dan Ariely).

 Targeting Behaviorally-Based Problems

Not all problems in health and finance are behaviorally based—some illnesses are genetic rather than preventable by behavior change, for instance, and such a goal as ending poverty requires more than behavioral interventions alone, but also changes to policies and systems. But behavior is the underlying cause of many problems in health and finance—and behavior is what humans can control. Even the bulk of premature deaths (from preventable health issues) can be attributed to our poor decision-making, and thus could be avoided if “readily available alternative choices were made”[4].

Startup tech solutions that enhance people’s lives are those that work in conjunction with the user’s natural operation and daily environment, and enable them to make decisions that are in their best interests. In the health domain, for example, we know that ineffective (or lack of) hand washing by doctors is a widespread problem in hospitals[5] that leads to the spread of bacteria. A solution to this behaviorally based problem would need to integrate with a doctor’s daily routine and nudge them at the right time and place to complete the key behavior of washing their hands. In finance, increasing savings for low-income populations is an important mission. One such solution that further this goal might target people at the point that they bring a check into the bank, and encourage them to allocate some of it towards savings rather than defaulting to cashing the entire check.

We can use behavioral economics to make alternative choices readily available and make it easier for people to choose the better option. Helping people behave in ways that make them healthier (like adhering to their prescribed medication), or make decisions that increase their financial well-being (like allocating discretionary funds to pay down debt instead of making unnecessary purchases) are the kinds of solutions that we’re invested in bringing to fruition.

The kinds of startups that the Startup Lab seeks to invest in and collaborate with are those that are working to solve behaviorally based, high-impact problems in health and finance.

Is the Startup Lab the Right Place for You?

Apart from our focus on high-impact problems that are behavior-driven, the central pillar of the Startup Lab is research application—so we’re looking for entrepreneurs with a rabid curiosity about the nuances of behavioral economics and how to apply concepts through research exploration and execution.

Though we seek startups that share our value and understanding of experimenting, we often have to remind entrepreneurs that there’s no magic formula. Exploring research and figuring out what works in the context of a specific tech platform is a process that requires testing. All the time.

Teams that readily understand this will be better equipped to seek, understand, and find value in the CAH’s resources. Leveraging behavioral economics requires buying in—learning the language of academic research and navigating relationships with social scientists. If your team is ready to dive in and figure out what implications behavioral science has for your company’s development, then we want you.

[1] Camerer, C. (1999). Behavioral economics: Reunifying psychology and economics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(19), 10575-10577.

[2] United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.). Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved from http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html

[3] World Health Organization. (n.d.). Infographic: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Retrieved from http://www.who.int/sdg/infographic/en/

[4] Keeney, R. L. (2008). Personal decisions are the leading cause of death. Operations Research, 56(6), 1335-1347.

[5] Center for Disease Control. (2016, April 28). Hand Hygiene in Healthcare Settings. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/handhygiene/science/index.html

Are you insatiably curious about what drives decisions, shapes motivation, and influences behavior? Does your startup’s success hinge on the ability to affect positive behavior change that helps people live happier, healthier, and wealthier lives?  

The Startup Lab supports problem-solvers by making behavioral economics findings accessible and applicable. 

To learn more, visit our FAQs (includes information on the Startup Lab investment structure and other logistics) or connect with us at startup@danariely.com

Apply for the October 2017-June 2018 Startup Lab program by June 30^th at 5pm EST.  

Apply Now.

The post Leveraging Behavioral Economics for Better Startup Solutions appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

Wondering if your startup team is a good fit for the Center for Advanced Hindsight Startup Lab? Dan describes what type of team would work best with our system:

To learn more, visit our FAQs (includes information on the Startup Lab investment structure and other logistics) or connect with us at startup@danariely.com.

The post The Ideal Startup Teams for The CAH Startup Lab appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

See what Dan and Aline have to say in their paper on the choice architecture of privacy decision-making, hot off the presses, and make sure to check out the accompanying infographic below!

(Ariely, D. & Holzwarth, A. (2017). The choice architecture of privacy decision-making, Health Technology, 7 (22), 1-8.)

The post Helping People Save with Privacy and Transparency appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

We’re looking for startups that are eager to experiment, and demonstrate a passion for building research-backed solutions to health and finance challenges. Startup Lab applications are now open until June 30^th at 5pm EST. Apply here.

Exploration Informs Entrepreneurship

The Startup Lab is about accessibility—making behavioral economics findings readily available and quickly actionable for entrepreneurs. The incubator was born out of a need to better connect product designers with the wealth of academic research in social science. To achieve this, we’ve developed an iterative process that leads our startups through behavior mapping, exploring literature, conducting experiments, and implementing findings. The Startup Lab exposes startups to existing research, encourages them to explore, then teaches them how to apply the findings to create products in line with the natural operation of humans.

 The Startup Lab Process

“Too often, designers forget to find the library.” –Dan Ariely

Exploring the “library” of existing research is the first thing we teach entrepreneurs how to do. We want them to filter their ideas through the lens of behavioral research so they can build solutions from an understanding of how people make decisions.

But we don’t leave them to decipher the academic literature alone. We provide a framework for how to interpret and leverage research in the context of their business. Our approach to applying BE to tech solutions is an iterative cycle that uses existing literature and our behavior mapping process to inform experimentation, which in turn informs which changes to implement into the product. Let’s look at the components of this cycle:

1. Behavior Mapping: Identify Problems and Brainstorm Solutions

Behavior mapping is a way for entrepreneurs to get familiar with the motivations and environments of their users. We use this as an identification tool. We lay out the customer’s journey (including each step of using a tech product, though the product is just one part of the process we are trying to understand) so we can articulate our goals for the user and focus in on problem areas.

What is the key behavior we’re attempting to influence? What are the biggest barriers to this behavior? Where in the customer’s journey do we need to intervene to help them complete that key behavior?

2. Look to the Literature

There is a large body of academic research ready to inform the behavioral problems and solutions that vex many startups. Yet products are often designed without the help of social science or scientific rigor, and later fail to attract adoption or deliver on their promises when used by people.

Behavior mapping uncovers barriers to positive behavior so that we can identify potential behavioral interventions. But we always circle back to the literature to answer these questions:

Have other researchers tested similar interventions before? In what context? Can we apply aspects of what they did to experiment here?

In essence, we’re learning from those who have gone before us, having tried similar solutions in similar contexts. We then want to build on those solutions through new experimentation.

3. Experiment

We use original research to fill in the gaps that the literature doesn’t yet cover.

Beyond learning from existing research, we aim to bridge the gap between where academic papers leave off and real world application begins. Our ultimate approach to applying research to startup products is collaborative, original research.

4.  Implement Findings

Once we’ve collected and analyzed the data from an experiment, we can determine if the intervention we tested was successful in effectively influencing the positive behavior we set out to influence. Before collecting data, we determined how effective an intervention must be in order to move forward in implementing it into the product. If it meets pre-set standards, we deem it worthwhile and integrate the change to create a more effective product.

Entrepreneurs and Experimentation

The Startup Lab creates the environment—the time, space, and resources—for entrepreneurs to think, explore, and learn about behavioral economics. Startups are pointed towards relevant reading, provided with an infrastructure to soak up resources and learning, and surrounded with researchers ready to talk about interesting problems and hypothesize solutions.

Collaboration happens when people share space. Innovation happens when collaboration spurs original research.

We equip entrepreneurs with the right tools and people to execute original research. Experimentation provides evidence-based insight into what really works. Experiments don’t have to take an intimidating amount of time, effort, and resources. It’s better to create a process of iteration, where we fail with the intent to learn. The goal is to pinpoint what works and constantly create opportunities to fail forward.

P.S. We like to make rigorous experimentation accessible to a broad range of companies. Our Experimenting in Business series provides tools and guidance for using research to make smarter business decisions. Our first post is about beginning your experimentation process with the end in mind: Read here. 

 The Startup Lab supports problem-solvers by making behavioral economics findings accessible and applicable.

Are you insatiably curious about what drives decisions, shapes motivation, and influences behavior? Does your startup’s success hinge on the ability to affect positive behavior change that helps people live happier, healthier, and wealthier lives?  

Apply for the October 2017-June 2018 Startup Lab program by June 30^th at 5pm EST. Apply Now

To learn more, visit our FAQs (includes information on the Startup Lab investment structure and other logistics) or connect with us at startup@danariely.com

The post Exploration & Experimentation for Entrepreneurship appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

We’re looking for startups that are eager to experiment, and demonstrate a passion for building research-backed solutions to health and finance challenges.

Startup Lab applications are now open until June 30^th at 5pm EST. Apply here.

Designing for Humans

We strongly believe that, for the good of those they serve, all companies must consider how humans interact with products and services. Startups that go through our program learn and leverage behavioral findings to create products with behavioral economics built into their DNA.

When the Center for Advanced Hindsight launched the Startup Lab in the fall of 2015, it was designed as an academic incubator. We wanted to enable early stage startups to apply research and leverage rigorous experimentation to improve the effectiveness of their tech products—while also providing researchers with interesting venues for decision-making experiments.

This means that full-time researchers at the CAH enter collaborative relationships with the startups that we invite into the program. Researchers and entrepreneurs work together to conceive, plan, and execute experiments using the startup’s tech platform.

Opening our doors for startups to immerse themselves at the CAH provides a means of exploring behavioral economics and creates collision with behavioral researchers—which ultimately cultivates the ability to apply research findings to real-world solutions.

What we’ve discovered in two short years is that we value the agility and drive that entrepreneurs bring to the table. And it brings us great joy to support off-the-wall solutions to important, behavior-centric problems (and we’ve found that entrepreneurs who are quirky and solution-oriented are often great collaborators).

Solutions for the Real World

At the Center for Advanced Hindsight, we are interested in using research findings to build solutions for the real world. We believe that research should not end with an academic paper, but be utilized further to inform the tools and processes that shape everyday human behavior. To pursue this goal with startups, we designed the mechanism for such research application to be familiar to entrepreneurs: the incubator.

The Startup Lab: A Different Kind of Incubator

The Startup Lab mimics the structure and resources that are found in many incubators—providing startups with investment money, office space, equipment, and a network of mentors and field experts—but also adds a layer of close, collaborative research relationships. Because of this focus, there are specific types of startups the CAH is invested in supporting. We look for startups that:

1. Align with CAH research interests

Effective collaboration requires a foundation of mutual interest and the ability to seek and cultivate those overlapping interests with CAH researchers. We are primarily interested in improving health and financial decision-making, and our partnerships with startups work best when business goals are aligned such that startups design tools aimed at helping consumers make better health and financial decisions.

2. Demonstrate that positively influencing behavior is core to their mission and integral to their success

Startups working on behavior-centric problems are positioned to gain the most from their time at the Startup Lab, because we’re in the business of positively influencing behavior change (rather than inciting attitude changes or policy changes, for example).

3. Are hungry to experiment (and rigorously so)

An intense willingness to dive in and learn the process of rigorous experimentation is vital for teams to reap the benefits of their learning at the Startup Lab. We want our startups to not only learn about behavioral economics concepts, but also carry forward the ability to test and implement the concepts they learn after they graduate from the program.

What else do we look for in entrepreneurs? Here are some qualities of strong applicants that are poised to leverage resources at the Startup Lab to their fullest:

The Startup Lab supports problem-solvers by making behavioral economics findings accessible and applicable. 

Are you insatiably curious about what drives decisions, shapes motivation, and influences behavior? Does your startup’s success hinge on the ability to affect positive behavior change that helps people live happier, healthier, and wealthier lives? 

Apply for the October 2017-June 2018 Startup Lab program by June 30^th at 5pm EST. Apply Now.

To learn more, visit our FAQs (includes information on the Startup Lab investment structure and other logistics) or connect with us at startup@danariely.com

The post Health & Finance Entrepreneurs, We’re Looking for You appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

The post An Academic Incubator appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

We’re excited to announce that we’re searching for our next class of the Startup Lab, which begins October 2017.

Applications are only open until June 30th at 5pm EST–  

Our academic incubator supports problem-solvers by making behavioral economics findings accessible and applicable. See how behavioral researchers and entrepreneurs work together at the Center for Advanced Hindsight:

The Startup Lab provides:

– Ability to explore behavioral economics and learn how to leverage findings for your startup

– Opportunity to collaborate with world-renowned behavioral researchers

– Guidance and resources to run rigorous experiments

– Office space in downtown Durham, NC up to 9 months (October-June)

– Investment up to $60k

Are you insatiably curious about what drives decisions, shapes motivation, and influences behavior? Does your startup’s success hinge on the ability to affect positive behavior change that helps people live happier, healthier, and wealthier lives?

We’re looking for startups that are eager to experiment, and demonstrate a passion for building research-backed solutions to health and finance challenges.

. You only have until June 30th at 5pm EST.

To learn more, visit our FAQs (includes information on the Startup Lab investment structure and other logistics) or connect with us at startup@danariely.com.

The post Build better health and finance tech products for humans. Join the Startup Lab. appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.

Our team at Common Cents worked with employee financial wellness company Retiremap to build an 8 week financial health platform that keeps the human advisor but uses technology to automate the coaching. By doing this, we aim to provide the benefits of financial counseling at a larger scale.  After building and testing live prototypes, we are rolling out the program with a number of employers and advisors, including the award-winning retirement plan advisory firm Channel Financial. Over the next year we’ll kick off a controlled trial to measure its impact.

In order to build this product, Retiremap and Common Cents had to understand and then operationalize the key drivers of financial counseling programs. Accountability, Confidence and One-Time Decisions are the three main product principles that we narrowed on to drive the development.

Accountability

To overcome the “intention-action” gap, we often need an external push. Accountability through deadlines or check-ins are just two examples of external motivators.

We’ve seen the power of deadlines time and again in our own experiments: one doubled the response rate to an email by including a reply deadline, and another increased the number of applications for a low interest rate loan by 24% simply by including a deadline.

For example, Minneapolis North High School effectively applies the accountability principle. Students are required to meet with a designated adviser: a classroom teacher who essentially doubles as an academic coach. This 36-minute period of accountability is cited by teachers and administrators to be a main driver in improved graduation rate. Minneapolis Public Schools increased their graduation rate by 39 percentage points over the last two years.

How do we apply this in Retiremap?  

There are two phone sessions with your advisor at the start and at the end of the program. But we needed to keep people motivated during the 8 weeks to complete the financial challenges and make some real changes to their savings, debt, and spending habits. To set ourselves up for success, the platform incorporates deadlines, active commitments, forced choice, calendar appointments, and implementation intentions to help increase the odds that people won’t lose motivation.

Below are some sample screen captures highlighting the accountability concept. 

Confidence

In a clever study,  researchers Hadar, Sood, and Fox examined the role confidence plays in our financial decision-making for retirement savings. The study’s researchers broke participants into two groups and provided each with different materials. One group was given basic descriptions of low- and high-risk investment funds, while the second – a more advanced description with complex terminology.

The participants were then asked how likely they would be to invest in each fund. Those given more technical and advanced descriptions were less likely to invest, regardless of whether the fund was low or high risk.

Participants’ confidence in their understanding of the funds played more of a role in their investment decisions than the actual risk profile of the funds.

How do we apply this in Retiremap?  

In the RetireMap Platform, there are many times that we remind users that they are more than capable and ready to take control of their financial future.

Below are some sample screen captures highlighting the confidence concept. 

One Time Behaviors vs Habits

Habits are hard to break. Habits are hard to form. When at all possible the Retiremap platform emphasizes “one-time” behaviors that people can do to improve their financial life.

For example, we help people design their bank account structure to match their long term goals. In a three-year randomized experiment, researchers found that parents provided with college savings accounts showed higher social and cognitive performance. The hypothesis is that parents given college savings accounts changed how they thought about their child’s future.

This intervention was not about educating parents about their child or about their finances. Instead, this intervention was designed to help parents create a “college-bound” savings account by default. In this way, researchers made it easy for parents to opt into a child savings account.

By providing a separate account, the researchers helped create a college-bound identity for the children in their parents’ minds.

How do we apply this in Retiremap?  

RetireMap uses this same strategy to help employees save on everything from short-term savings to 529 plans to retirement accounts. This One- Time Behavior of setting up an account and the automatic transfer takes much less mental energy than monthly budgeting to figure out how much you can spend and how much you have saved up.

It’s just the beginning.

Common Cents partnered with Retiremap to develop a scalable and effective robo-advisor as a way to increase savings and financial wellness for those who need it most. We think the result is a platform that removes the complexity from financial decision making and delivers positive, personalized coaching one step at a time. As the journey continues we will report on its impact in the field.

To learn more about the Retiremap System, visit http://retiremaphq.com/

1.  Lerman et al., 1995; Marcus et al., 1998; Proper et al., 2003; Rimer and Kreuter, 2006
2. The ABCs of Financial Education: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes, Behavior, and Cognitive Biases Fenella Carpena, Shawn Cole, Jeremy Shapiro, and Bilal Zia

The post Just Launched: Financial coaching app infused with behavioral science principles appeared first on Center for Advanced Hindsight.