3Jun2019
Vegard Jørmeland at the Speaker Contest 2019
by: Nordic Business Forum
Vegard Jørmeland competed in the Speaker Contest 2019, making it to the final round of the contest on May 23rd, 2019.
Vegard Jørmeland – Behavioral Design: Getting people to click (…by understanding what makes them tick)
Key messages:
- Despite the finding that humans have free will. Psychological studies suggest that 95% of our decisions are made on a subconscious level. One could, therefore, say that humans to some extent are robots making decisions on autopilot.
- As a consequence of this, another feature humans have in common with robots is that they are subject to being hacked. Not by teens sitting in the dark basements of their parents’ houses but rather by multinational corporations who, by application of simple psychological models in the product design process, are able to install new scripts in the users’ autopilot. These behavioral scripts driving the user to use the corporation’s product.
- Despite sounding like something straight out of a science fiction novel. Vegard goes on to demonstrate how several of the most valuable corporations on the planet today are making use of these methods. Some by intention and others by accident.
- He then goes on to argue that these corporations have transcended from doing Software Engineering to be doing Mind Engineering. This being an emerging discipline which he says can be compared to the Internet in 1995. As such it is not only poorly understood at the present time, but there is also a wealth of opportunity for early movers in the years to come.
The bottom line? Rituals and traditions form patterns in our brain that we call being on autopilot. We can harness the understanding of neurological pathways for better business.
About Vegard Jørmeland
As a young software developer, Vegard Jørmeland only had one problem: the users who did not use his products…! Upon realizing the problem was not them but actually himself, he decided to quit his job, sell most of his belongings, and move to a foreign country to study psychology. A decade later, he is serving as head of behavioral design at one of the largest financial services groups in the Nordic countries.
Speaker Contest 2019
We hosted the second edition of the Speaker Contest in 2019, in which we hoped to discover ingenious talent, innovative concepts, and intriguing perspectives from professionals and first-timers alike. Over 180 people applied for the contest, 24 made it to the qualifiers in Helsinki, Stockholm, and Oslo, and six finalists competed on the 23rd of May, 2019, to win €30,000 and a spot in the speaker lineup for Nordic Business Forum 2019. The winner was Anssi Rantanen.
Want to see the winner in action? We still have tickets available for Nordic Business Forum 2019. Get yours today!
