In this edition of the bottom line, we're looking at the role of behavioural science in business, its uses and its abuses.

Hello, welcome to the programme. Business is run by humans, it's done by humans, all for human customers.

So understanding how human beings think

and what makes them tick can be enormously helpful in running a company. Well, that sounds obvious,

but the systematically irrational ways in which most of our species operates have not always

been appreciated. However, it is fair to say in the last couple of decades that lapse has been dealt with.

Psychology has caught on, and we've seen the rise and rise of behavioural science.

And it is that which is our topic today.

We'll look at how you might use behavioural science to improve decision-making, taking out the hidden biases that affect us all.

We'll look at how you motivate a workforce or

improve the corporate culture. And we'll look at customers. Does behavioural science help

companies exploit their psychological foibles to make them buy stuff? Well, it's a fascinating

area. We have three well-qualified guests to talk us through it, so let us meet them. And first up is Octavius Black, co-founder of Mind Jim. And Octavius, you were on a program late last year with us talking about inappropriate behaviour at work, bringing lots of psychological insights to bear. And we thought, my goodness, we should do a whole programme on psychological insights. So we've invited you back. Just remind us what Mind Jim is. Yes, Mind Jim was a behavioural science business. We started in my kitchen 18 years ago. We just floated on the London stock market last summer. We worked with most of the Futsi 100 and most of the S&P 100 companies on how do you deploy behavioural science at scale to address human, people, talent, cultural issues.

OK, let me put you on the spot. Name me one big success, transformative change you've made to an organisation you've helped.

I give you an example from a chain of childcare or kindergarten centres, where the issue that they presented us with was

the conversion rate, the proportion of parents who came to visit the centre who actually signed up

for their child rather than walking away with the brochure. They wanted to improve this.

And what was very clear is these people feel very proud of the work they do. They think that

children who come to their centres are far better off than those that don't. So we run a program called The Missing Millions,

the millions of children who never get the benefit of coming to these childcare centres. Now, how do you find out who those missing millions are? Well, you have to ask the parents. So Evan, thank you very much for coming in. Visitors. You have a little son. He's called Azeem. Azeem loves numbers. do you think Zee would enjoy the abacus?

Or maybe as we get around,

Zim would enjoy these dice here.

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