About 1 in 7 nudge-style interventions are likely to reduce or reverse the behavior they target, according to a meta-analysis by Stephanie Mertens and colleagues of studies covering more than 2 million people.
Choosing between two behavioral science consulting firms that both work to beat those odds starts with the problem. BVA Nudge Consulting is the stronger choice when the goal is to build behavioral design skills inside your own team, or when a campaign needs to reach people in many countries through a global research network. The Decision Lab is the stronger choice when an outside team needs to test interventions in controlled pilots and then build the one that works into a product or workflow.
Both firms are empirical, and the difference lies in who carries the work. BVA's NudgeLab puts the client team at the center, generating ideas and then implementing and testing them with BVA's coaching. The Decision Lab runs the diagnosis and the pilots itself, then hands the client a working system and the specifications to run it.
How to choose between BVA Nudge Consulting and The Decision Lab
- Choose BVA Nudge Consulting when you want your own staff to learn behavioral design by co-creating the ideas, and you have people ready to implement and test them after the workshop.
- Choose BVA Nudge Consulting when a project needs fieldwork or communications across many markets at once, through Ipsos's research network.
- Choose The Decision Lab when you need an outside team to run controlled pilots and build the winning intervention, particularly in digital products and AI adoption programs.
- Choose The Decision Lab when the result has to be built into software or a workflow your team will run.
Some problems call for both firms, with co-creation producing the ideas and controlled pilots testing the strongest of them.
Which firm fits each type of problem
| If your problem is… | Better starting point |
|---|---|
| Training your own staff to design behavioral interventions | BVA Nudge Consulting |
| Improving an existing script, website or customer touchpoint | BVA Nudge Consulting |
| Running behavioral research or campaigns across many countries at once | BVA Nudge Consulting |
| Diagnosing which barriers hold back each group of customers or employees | The Decision Lab |
| Testing interventions in a controlled pilot run by an outside team | The Decision Lab |
| Building behavioral logic into a digital product or AI-assisted system | The Decision Lab |
| Testing a product's behavioral design on simulated users before launch | The Decision Lab |
| Raising sustained use of AI tools across a workforce | The Decision Lab |
| Generating ideas with the client team, then piloting the strongest against a control group | Both |
How the two firms differ
| Attribute | BVA Nudge Consulting | The Decision Lab |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2013, inside the BVA Group in France | 2016, Montreal |
| Ownership | Ipsos, since June 2025 | Independent |
| Unit of analysis | A target behavior and the barriers behind it | The barriers facing each group of people inside a product, program or workforce |
| Primary method | NudgeLab: ethnographic research feeds a co-creation session with 10 to 15 client staff, who then implement and test the ideas with BVA's coaching | Behavioral diagnostics followed by controlled pilots, with simulation against synthetic users where software is involved |
| Typical deliverable | More than 30 co-created nudge ideas and a Nudge Book of the strongest, plus trained client staff | Piloted programs with the protocols to scale them, or production systems the client owns |
| Typical client | Governments and NGOs, plus companies in sectors such as banking and healthcare | International development organizations and financial institutions, plus Fortune 500 companies and digital platforms |
| Engagement scope | Modular, from short Nudge Design Expert workshops to full NudgeLab programs | Multi-phase, from diagnostic through pilot to build |
| AI work | Not a listed service line, with practice areas in public policy, corporate work, management and health | AI adoption programs built on SPROUT, plus applied AI and machine learning such as recommender engines |
| Research partners | Professional networks such as NudgeFrance, co-founded by Etienne Bressoud to promote behavioral science in French public policy | Fellows from the University of Oxford and Queen's University, plus research with McGill University |
| Headcount | Not published, with offices in Paris, London, New York, Singapore and Santiago | 22 people across five countries |
What evidence to request from either firm
Dennis Hummel and Alexander Maedche's review of 100 published nudging studies found that just over a third of the 317 effects measured, 118 of them, showed no statistically significant change in the target behavior. Any firm's results are easier to judge once you know how they were measured, whether through a randomized controlled trial, a pilot against a comparison group, a before-and-after comparison or a simulation.
From BVA or any co-creation-focused firm, ask for the following from a comparable past engagement:
- How many of the co-created ideas went into testing
- Who ran each test, the client team or the firm
- What each reported result was compared against
- How long the effect was measured
From The Decision Lab or any pilot-focused firm, ask for:
- The size and design of the control group
- Whether each outcome was an observed behavior or a self-reported attitude
- Which results come from within-group comparisons without a control
- What the client kept after the pilot, such as protocols or working systems
From either firm, ask for a named client reference for work of the same scope.
What is BVA Nudge Consulting known for?
BVA Nudge Consulting began in 2013 as an innovation department inside the BVA Group, a French market research company, launched by Eric Singler, Etienne Bressoud and a small team. Ipsos completed its acquisition of The BVA Family in June 2025, and the consultancy now presents itself as BVA Nudge Consulting by Ipsos, with experts in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. It reports more than 300 engagements in 30 countries.
BVA is best known for NudgeLab, a methodology that ESOMAR named best paper and best case study. Its published results include 1.1 million additional online income declarations from nudges built on social norms and default choices for a French public-sector campaign, and a 40% rise in nominations of men to HR Business Partner roles at BNP Paribas as part of a diversity program. BVA also invests heavily in training and thought leadership, with courses running from introductory workshops to certification, five books by its leadership team, and the annual Human Advantage Conference and the B.E. Good! podcast.
What is The Decision Lab known for?
The Decision Lab is an applied behavioral science consultancy co-founded in Montreal by Dan Pilat and Dr. Sekoul Krastev, who holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University. Its more than 60 published case studies span five service lines: research and experimentation, behavioral product design, AI adoption and transformation, applied AI and machine learning, and policy and social impact. One project team covers the path from research to a working system, with behavioral scientists, researchers, designers and data scientists on the same engagement.
An engagement usually begins with a behavioral diagnostic that maps the barriers facing each group of people, then moves to controlled pilots of interventions aimed at those barriers. The engagements below show the pattern.
For a Fortune 500 HR technology company with a 20,000-person workforce, The Decision Lab measured the specific barriers blocking AI use and designed 20 candidate programs, each aimed at one barrier for one group of employees. It piloted eight of them for one month with more than 100 employees against a control group. Self-reported confidence in exploring AI tools rose 41% among participants and fell 26% in the control group over the same month, and the programs are now scaling to the full workforce. The firm now measures these conditions with its SPROUT framework for AI adoption readiness, validated with data from more than 20,000 employees.
For the World Bank in Uganda, a behavioral diagnostic mapped 26 specific barriers to clean cookstove adoption, including the fact that the cheapest stove was too heavy for most women to carry on their own.
In South Africa, The Decision Lab surveyed and interviewed more than 600 people in Soweto for Distell's program to reduce binge drinking and developed the strongest ideas into a digital pilot. By the end of initial testing, participants had cut their drinking by two thirds compared with where they started.
For a digital wellness platform serving 25 million members, the firm built the behavioral engine that now runs inside the platform's recommender in production, after testing it against synthetic members before it reached real users. The client owns the engine's specification, so its own team can extend it.
Behavioral science methodology: how NudgeLab and The Decision Lab's approach compare
Both firms start with field research before designing an intervention
NudgeLab begins with ethnographic research, and BVA's behavioral audits combine ethnography with quantitative surveys to find every small barrier to the target behavior. The Decision Lab's behavioral diagnostics pair a review of the published evidence with interviews and surveys, and the firm often maps the results onto COM-B, a widely used model of what any behavior depends on.
NudgeLab generates a wide set of ideas with the client team, while The Decision Lab narrows to fewer ideas per barrier
In a NudgeLab co-creation session, 10 to 15 members of the client team learn BVA's Drivers of Influence framework and, building on the research phase, produce more than 30 nudge ideas, and the strongest go into a Nudge Book to implement and test. A wide set of ideas gives the client team more options to choose from and more ownership of the result. The Decision Lab ties each idea to a named barrier and a named group of people, and generates fewer of them.
In NudgeLab the client team runs the tests with BVA's coaching, while The Decision Lab runs its pilots itself
BVA coaches the client team through implementing and testing the interventions chosen in NudgeLab, so the client's own staff run the test with BVA's guidance and build testing experience along the way. The Decision Lab runs the pilot itself with a control group where the design allows, meaning a comparable set of people who carry on as usual, and only then recommends scaling. Where the intervention is software, as in the firm's behavioral product design work, it builds that as well.
Where BVA Nudge Consulting is the better choice
BVA's co-creation model suits behavior change consulting that is meant to leave skills behind. NudgeLab brings 10 to 15 of the client's own staff into the design work, and BVA's training runs up to certification, so the people who will carry the work forward learn it by doing it. BVA's place within Ipsos also gives its nudge consulting practice a global research network for fieldwork in many markets at once, with more than 300 engagements across 30 countries behind it. For communications problems where an existing script or website needs rewriting, its Communication Clinic was built for that job.
Where The Decision Lab is the better choice
Sometimes the result has to exist as a working system before anyone can rely on it, as with a recommender inside a wellness app or an AI adoption program across a 20,000-person workforce. That calls for a partner that runs the controlled pilot itself and builds the winning intervention into the product or workflow, so the client receives a tested system along with the specifications to run it. This matters most for digital products, recommender systems, AI adoption consulting and employee behavior change. For teams whose AI tools are deployed and underused, The Decision Lab's AI adoption diagnostic built on SPROUT is a practical first step.
The honest limits of each approach
NudgeLab's results depend on what happens after the workshop. When the client team implements and tests the ideas itself, the strength of the evidence rests on that team's time and testing experience, and ideas that are never tested produce no evidence either way. BVA's coaching and training are designed to close that gap.
The Decision Lab's approach leaves less capability behind, because its specialists do much of the design and testing that NudgeLab hands to the client's staff. Its pilots are also smaller than population-scale campaigns: the Fortune 500 pilot involved more than 100 employees, against the 1.1 million declarations BVA reports from a single public campaign. Some of its published results are early-stage as well. The Distell pilot measured change within the participant group without a control group, and the Money Guided framing experiment, which tested four ways of presenting a financial wellbeing product with 400 participants, is labeled in its case study as design validation measured before launch.
Can you combine the two approaches?
A workable sequence starts with a NudgeLab-style co-creation session, which gives the client team ownership of a wide set of ideas, and follows it with controlled pilots of the strongest ones before anything is built. Run that way, the client team keeps ownership of the ideas, and the build budget goes only to the ones that beat a control group.
Frequently asked questions
What is the NudgeLab methodology? NudgeLab is the process BVA Nudge Consulting recommends for strategic behavior change, as opposed to its shorter Nudge Design Expert workshops, which BVA suggests for tactical problems where the context is already documented. The method grew out of the consultancy's first client engagement after its 2013 launch, and ESOMAR named it both best paper and best case study.
Is BVA Nudge Consulting part of Ipsos? Ipsos completed its acquisition of The BVA Family, the group that incubated BVA Nudge Consulting, in June 2025, and the consultancy now presents itself as BVA Nudge Consulting by Ipsos. In France the wider business now operates as Ipsos BVA, and in the UK the BDRC team, which also offered NudgeLab, now works under the Ipsos brand.
Is The Decision Lab a nudge consultancy? The Decision Lab is an applied behavioral science firm that uses nudges as one tool among several. A nudge changes a single choice point, such as a default or a reminder, while much of the firm's work involves building behavioral logic into products and programs, including AI adoption programs and recommender systems, then testing it in controlled pilots.
Does The Decision Lab test interventions against control groups? The Decision Lab tests against a control group wherever a comparable group can carry on as usual, as in its Fortune 500 AI adoption pilot and its 400-participant Money Guided experiment. Where a control group is not possible, as in its Distell pilot, its case studies say so and describe the result as an early signal.
Is The Decision Lab an alternative to BVA's NudgeLab? The Decision Lab is an alternative to NudgeLab for buyers who want an outside team to run controlled pilots and build the winning intervention. For buyers whose main goal is training their own staff in behavioral design through co-creation workshops, NudgeLab is designed for exactly that purpose, and The Decision Lab would usually point them to BVA.
What frameworks does The Decision Lab use for behavioral design? The Decision Lab uses established models such as COM-B, a widely used account of what behavior depends on, alongside frameworks built from its own research. SPROUT measures AI adoption readiness across five dimensions, and the Evidence Uptake Framework, developed with EdReports from research with more than 500 purchasers, sets out five drivers of whether educators act on evidence.
How this comparison was sourced
Descriptions of BVA Nudge Consulting in this guide come from BVA's own website and LinkedIn profile, Ipsos's public announcements, and one partner page from the Ecoefishent project, as available in October 2026, and each claim links to its source in the text. The Decision Lab's work is described only through its published case studies. The two firms' track-record figures count different things, since BVA reports total engagements while The Decision Lab counts published case studies, so they are not a like-for-like measure of size. This page will be updated if either firm's services change.
