Behavioral Insights: Value of Experimentation, Curricula. North Star Metrics, BE Guide, Third Thumbs...
Hi there! You're receiving this email because you signed up to Behavioral Insights, a weekly newsletter by Kevin Anderson at the intersection of experimentation, analytics and behavioral science. Thank you for being here.
Behavioral Insights.
👋 Hi, last week I started a new personal experiment with Focusmate. I wrote something about this tool, why I started using it and the first results.
in this week's Behavioral Insights newsletter I have selected 5 articles for you. Let's dive in. 🤿
1. Does experimentation lack investment? 💰
Chad Sanderson shared his approach on how to investigate the benefits of experimentation for a company. It starts by answering these three questions:
What do we need to measure scientifically?
What is the opportunity cost of lower set-up and analysis time?
Can we measure what we want?
Answering these questions will also help in explaining the value of experimentation better.
2. Business Schools need to teach experimentation 🎓
In this HBR article the authors make the case for including training in experimentation and the scientific method in the curricula of business school programs. Read the article
3. Behavioral Economics Guide 2021 📙
The 2021 Behavioral Economics Guide is out, including a case study from ING: "How Targeted Messaging Can Help Customers With Low Savings Build a Buffer" Get your copy here
4. Choosing your North Star Metric ⭐
Lenny Rachitsky shares a framework on how to choose a north star metric. Most important question to answer is: "Which metric, if it were to increase today, would most accelerate my business’ flywheel? " Read the article
5. The Third Thumb 👍👍👍
Scientists did an experiment where 36 people were fitted with a robotic third thumb. People's brains quickly adapted and leveraged this new body part. Read the article
😀 Fun of the week
Summer is approaching. In case you want to spice up your Out of Office message, you can use this cool generator to mix in some insights from Wikipedia. 🏖️

As always, if you're enjoying this newsletter, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.
I try to make it one of the best emails you get each week, and I hope you're enjoying it.
And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.
Until next week, keep experimenting.
— Kevin