July 3, 2015, by Suzanne

Warwick Business School – Second Nudgeathon

Photo of competitors at the first Nudgeathon

Competitors at the First Nudgeathon

On the 14th and 15th of September 2015, the second Nudgeathon, a behavioural change competition founded by the Warwick Business School, will take place at The Shard in London.

Nudgeathon, as its name implies, is a nudging marathon. The main objective of the event is to develop implementable solutions to a given social issue. The idea to organise such an event came from Umar Taj, a PhD student from the Behavioural Science Group at WBS. “When I was studying behavioural science during my MSc, I wanted to apply those principles to see if they actually worked or not, in real life settings. The kinds of problems I wanted to see at Nudgeathon were the types that we, students, would actually face in a work environment. The structure of hackathons seemed like an adequate model, limiting the time frame for coming up with solutions and increasing creativity by incorporating a little bit of time pressure”, explains Umar.

In order to maintain a multidisciplinary character of the event, speakers from diverse fields — behavioural science, design thinking, public policy, creativity, team building and public speaking — are invited to give talks and conduct workshops. “The workshops that happen during Nudgeathon are intended to help students develop skills needed to effectively tackle the given problem brief but also to develop skills needed for their future careers”, says Umar Taj.

This will be a second event of this kind organised by WBS. The first Nudgeathon took place on 31 January – 1 February 2015 at Warwick Business School. Which?, the biggest consumer organization in the UK, was the main Partner and provided the problem brief for the teams to work on. This time, WBS  is partnering with The Behavioural Insights Team, who will provide the problem brief for the students to work on, and Ogilvy Change, who will take part in the competition as a Master Team. There will also be a poster session at which students can present their research to colleagues from other universities and the leading academic and decision-makers in the field of behavioural science.

Applications are now open and students from all universities in the UK and beyond are encouraged to apply. More information can be found at www.nudgeathon.com and www.facebook.com/nudgeathon.

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