Learn how to deepend your understanding of humans -- those you serve and those on your team -- to accelerator your growth and impact.
Featuring insights from an award-winning author and researcher alongside 8 inspiring social enterprises, we unpack how the Social Sciences can help us scale social innovation.
Below, you will find:
People don’t always act in their own best interest, even when they want to. Emotional factors like fear, inertia, and short-term gratification often override logic.
A health-focused social entrepreneur realized that her SMS tips weren’t ignored because people didn’t care — they were ignored because the messages arrived at emotionally inconvenient times.
Design your solutions based on behavior, not information. Educating people is not enough — you need to change the context of their decisions.
A sustainable food startup redesigned its customer onboarding by removing unnecessary signup steps and introducing identity-based messaging (“Join the upcycle movement”).
Most behavior-change strategies fail because they underestimate how little it takes to stop someone from taking action.
One founder replaced a PDF download step with a pre-filled SMS link, increasing completion rates dramatically.
Behavioral science isn’t just for your product — it’s also for your team and culture.
A nonprofit leader saw employee engagement rise after shifting meetings to celebrate team wins on INPUTS and mission milestones.
Certain behavioral tools work across most cultures and use cases. These are “cheat codes” for social entrepreneurs.
A savings app added a gamified tracker with rewards and saw retention improve week-over-week.
Behavioral design is iterative. You need to test early, test often, and refine based on user behavior — not guesses.
A tech founder A/B tested two types of onboarding and found that using a testimonial-driven flow led to a 40% lift in activation
Social innovators often design solutions assuming people will do what’s best for their health, community, or environment. In reality, good intentions frequently falter. As behavioral economist Dan Ariely reminds us, humans are predictably irrational – we plan to eat healthy next month, then splurge when the time comes. People know what they should do to improve societal outcomes, but if the better long-term option is painful or less fun in the short term, they tend to slip back into old habits. This intention–action gap is a core challenge in social innovation: a program that looks great on paper can fail if it doesn’t account for real human behavior. As a social entrepreneur, you must design your solution to account for the biases and behaviors of the people you serve.
Fortunately, behavioral science offers practical strategies to close this gap. By understanding how people actually behave – not just what they should do – social enterprises can dramatically increase adoption, engagement, and impact. In a recent six-part masterclass series called Scaling Social Innovation with the Social Sciences, MovingWorlds CEO Mark Horoszowski and professor Dan Ariely worked with social entrepreneurs around the globe to apply behavioral insights to their challenges. The takeaway was clear: to scale impact, start by understanding the humans at the center of your theory of change. This article distills key lessons from that series into a practical guide. We’ll explore tools like persona-based theories of change, friction mapping, reward substitution, Ulysses contracts, and other behavioral design techniques – all illustrated with examples of social innovators putting these tools into action. By the end, you’ll see why behavioral science isn’t a “nice-to-have,” but a core part of any social entrepreneur’s toolkit for driving change.
Every social enterprise has a Theory of Change – a hypothesis of how its activities lead to impact. Too often, though, these theories are built around an abstract “user” or idealized beneficiary. In our series, we saw the power of making Theories of Change persona-based and human-centered. This means grounding your impact model in specific personas – vivid profiles of the real people you aim to serve – and mapping how each type of person moves from initial engagement to positive outcome.
To create a persona-based Theory of Change:
Identify the key stakeholder personas in your ecosystem.
Ask: What are their motivations, fears, daily realities, and cultural contexts?
Then map a tailored journey for each persona in your Theory of Change.
One entrepreneur discovered her venture actually served two distinct personas in providing eye care: a rural mother hesitant to buy glasses for her child, and an urban teacher needing affordable eyewear. Each had different motivators and barriers. For the mother, the solution included education on academic benefits and a payment plan. For the teacher, it emphasized style and empowerment. Tailoring solutions in this way ensures they resonate with people’s actual needs and mental models – not just what we assume they should care about.
Designing for real behavior requires not only motivating people, but also removing obstacles that make good behaviors harder to do. Every extra click, wait, or confusing step can be the difference between a user sticking with your program or giving up. Ariely often describes behavior change as a balance of fuel and friction – you need to add motivation (fuel) and remove barriers (friction) to close the gap between intention and action.
Friction mapping is a tool to systematically do this. Start by visualizing the entire journey a beneficiary or customer takes with your solution, from first contact to final outcome. At each step, ask:
Is there any hassle, confusion, or delay?
What might make someone give up here?
One edtech entrepreneur mapped her sign-up process and discovered a major drop-off at email verification. By simplifying this step, she significantly increased activation. Common friction points include:
Complicated forms
Long travel or time requirements
Financial or social risk
Decision overload
Mapping friction reveals hidden drop-off points. Then you can test simple tweaks to eliminate or reduce them. A great resource to learn more is this IDEO guide to human-centered design.
Humans struggle with behaviors that offer long-term benefits but short-term inconvenience. That’s where reward substitution comes in: give people a small, immediate reward to reinforce a positive action now – even if the real benefit comes later.
Ariely’s example: trying not to text while driving? Keep chocolate in the glovebox and treat yourself for good behavior. That short-term pleasure reinforces the long-term goal of safety.
Social entrepreneurs can use this by:
Offering badges or points for every completed learning module
Giving recognition or shout-outs in a group chat
Providing small but immediate tokens (like airtime or stickers)
A standout example is SuperBetter, a resilience-building app that uses games and rewards to keep people engaged in mental health practices. The psychology is simple: immediate rewards make hard things feel worth it in the moment – helping people stick with them long enough to reap the benefits.
A Ulysses contract is a pre-commitment strategy – a way to bind your future self to a good decision. The idea comes from mythology: Ulysses tied himself to his ship’s mast so he couldn’t follow the Sirens’ call. Similarly, people (and programs) can set up mechanisms to prevent backsliding.
These commitment devices include:
Physical barriers: Lock savings in a box until a future date
Social contracts: Make a public pledge or have a peer hold you accountable
Time-blocking or automation: Schedule behaviors in advance (e.g. auto-saving income)
Programs like GiveDirectly and SafeSave use variations of this. In our series, one education NGO used public peer pledges to increase student participation. These simple tools create a structure that helps people act in alignment with their goals – even when life gets in the way.
Beyond commitment, lasting behavior change depends on:
Rituals to reinforce intentions (like pausing before meals or meetings)
Purpose to align the behavior with someone’s identity and values
Public commitment to leverage social pressure and support
These methods tap into the psychology of belonging and consistency. For example:
A community recycling program framed participation as being an “Earth Guardian”
A literacy group posted participant goals publicly and gave stars for each completed book
A nutrition program added a “mindful minute” ritual before meals to prompt healthy choices
When you combine personal identity, group accountability, and small habit triggers, you create the conditions for sustained change.
For more, see BJ Fogg’s work on tiny habits or Charles Duhigg’s writing on habit loops.
Scaling social innovation is about changing behavior at scale. The key lesson from this series is that achieving this change means designing for how people actually behave. That means:
Designing theories of change around real personas
Mapping and removing friction in every user interaction
Offering small, immediate rewards to support long-term goals
Using commitment devices to help people follow through
Reinforcing actions through rituals, values, and public pledges
These insights aren’t just academic – they’re practical. And when used well, they make solutions more effective, equitable, and scalable. Social innovators who apply these tools will unlock impact not just through ideas, but through real-world, human-centered execution.
As Ariely said in one session: “Assume your future self will misbehave. Then design for that.”