On today's episode of Business Daily with me, Gareth Mitchell, meet the hidden people in business,

shaping the products we buy and the services we enjoy. Today, we're not meeting the CEO or the CFO,

CTO or C-O. Today, meet the social scientist. The preferred way would be to just go in and start watching and getting the lay of the land.

Who sits where? What is the nature of the interactions between people?

Whether it's psychologists, sociologists or anthropologists, businesses are snapping more and more of these people up.

There are really countless ways in which social scientists make discoveries that help us

to live our lives more effectively and to avoid some of the traps that are waiting out there

to catch us.

So we're sorting our psychologists from our sociologists and our economists from our ethicists

to work out how they're

meant to improve productivity, enhance problem solving and heightened social impact. What difference

can social scientists really make to the products, apps and services in our daily lives?

And is the trend for social science in the boardroom a uniquely Western phenomenon?

That's all to come here on Business Daily on the BBC World Service.

First then, what does a social scientist actually do? I know. Let's ask one.

Well, there are really countless ways in which social scientists make discoveries

that help us to live our lives more effectively and to avoid some of the traps that are waiting

out there to catch us. And social science also reveals very counterintuitive answers to questions.

So sometimes people think, well, all of this is really obvious.

And indeed, it often seems obvious once you know the answer.

But it's not obvious before.

It's really counterintuitive.

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