How and why markets aren't rational. Navigational tips for successfully charting the Bermuda Triangle of human economic behavior. ™

 
This morning, the Kyu Collective announced that it had acquired BEworks, which bills itself as "a behavioral sciences research institute and management consulting firm."
Now, I have nothing against Kyu, which is an IDEO investor, or BEworks, which was founded by Dan Ariely and Kelly Peters. Lemonade. All these weird questions I get about manipulating people. Methodological concerns.

Also, there is the question of the how, and the meaning.

Bring in Viktor Frankl.

"a behavioral sciences research institute and management consulting firm"

Not sure the below is what I really have in mind. Want to talk about the richness and beauty of this study, this practice, and how/why those of use who seek truth want to take it back from the marketeers and the manipulators.

I first stumbled on what is now known as Behavioral Economics circa 1986. At the time, I worked for a regional bank, managing the Consumer Research group. With a PhD in psychology and a graduate certificate in Management from the Wharton School, market research was among the rare business specializations where all of my training was relevant. Not inconsequentially, it was also a job I could get. I had wanted to go into consulting, but was told by the University of Pennsylvania Career Services that my heavy liberal arts background, combined with my appearance (I looked more like a teenager than a newly-minted PhD) made this a bridge too far.

Frustrated because I had trained for six long years in the world of 'deep thoughts' only to find myself comparing consumer purchase behaviors across infinitesimally different checking account pricing programs, I had taken a short break, to "shop" for marketing premiums in the department storeroom.

I looked at life, at behavior, through a multi-colored set of lenses, using everything I had learned... and especially what I had learned about methods and measurement.



permalink: posted by saraw1 at 6/29/2026 09:22:00 PM