I delve into the concept of positive deviance in behavioural science, where outliers within a group solve problems in unique ways. By examining these innovative approaches, we can transform them into policies or products that benefit a wider audience.

Exploring Positive Deviance in Behavioural Science

Positive deviance is a concept in behavioural science when you look at a group of people and you examine the outliers. So people with the same knowledge, the same resources, there'll be a handful of them which are solving problems in an unusual way compared to the rest of the group. So an example that's often given is if you look at a poor community where often children are undernourished, and then look for the families where the children are well-nourished, you'll see that there's probably some concepts or ideas that have actually been generated by the family in order to do that. And then when you take those concepts and turn those into policy or products, and then roll that out for the benefit of the remainder of the group. So when it's B2B SaaS, you look at the customers who are using your product in unusual ways to achieve outsized outcomes. So you study those, learn from those and roll it back into product for the benefit of your wider group of customers.