Abstract
What factors explain the success of the UK Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)? To answer this question, this paper applies insights from organizational theory, particularly accounts of change agents. Change agents are able — with senior sponsorship — to foster innovation by determination and skill: they win allies and circumvent more traditional bureaucratic procedures. Although BIT is a change agent — maybe even a skunkworks unit — not all the facilitating factors identified in the literature apply in this central government context. Key factors are its willingness to work in a non-hierarchical way, skills at forming alliances, and the ability to form good relationships with expert audiences. It has been able to promote a more entrepreneurial approach to government by using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as a robust method of policy evaluation.
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