I’m an optimist. Even in a world that feels more complex and chaotic by the day - with learning poverty, food insecurity, climate change, and widening inequality - I still believe we can make progress. But not by doing more of the same.
I’ve spent the past six years at Brink developing an approach we call Behavioural Innovation. BI combines the rigour of innovation methods with the deep insight of behavioural science. Because time and again, we’ve seen this same truth: you can’t change systems without changing behaviour; and you can’t change behaviour without understanding people.
Too often, well-intentioned innovation efforts falter because they ignore the very humans who need to engage, adapt, or support them. From Silicon Valley’s obsession with “moving fast and breaking things” to overly rigid grantmaking structures, systems keep getting built that overlook the messiness, motivations, and needs of the people inside them.
In this TEDx talk, I explored some of the big blind spots I see in the way we approach innovation, and what we might do differently.
📺 Watch the full talk here:
At Brink, we’ve learned that lasting change comes from understanding the full ecosystem of humans involved. Not just end users, but funders, governments, frontline workers, and everyone in between. It’s not enough to build clever tools. We need to shape the conditions around them: safety, agency, context, and trust.
That’s why I often return to one of my favourite behavioural science metaphors from Christina Maslach:
“Imagine investigating the personality of cucumbers to discover why they had turned into sour pickles, without analysing the vinegar barrels in which they had been submerged.”
The “vinegar” (the conditions, the culture, the constraints...) matters. If we want different outcomes, we have to get curious about that vinegar.
This talk is part of a wider conversation we’re starting at Brink, one that’s less about the shiny tools of innovation, and more about the work behind the work: trust, learning, and the deep relational practice change demands.
If that sounds like your kind of conversation, we’d love you to be part of it. Go here to follow along, join the dialogue, and shape what comes next.
