Since our founding in 2001, we’ve taken risks and looked for challenging and meaningful projects and partnerships where we can have a profound impact. With backing from The Omidyar Group, we are united by a common desire to catalyze social impact and empower people around the world.
We reverse-engineer health, identifying the key behavioral and psychological drivers of the health outcomes we ultimately want to improve. We draw on the best evidence, source insights from our own studies and those of colleagues and collaborators, and engage directly with teens and young adults. This phase illuminates the real needs to solve for and a set of hypotheses on how to do that.
Building and testing innovative products is the heart of what we do. Through iterative cycles of data-driven development, we create technologies that are engaging and sustainable, scaled to impact as many lives as possible. We conduct rigorous experiments at every stage of product development, including randomized controlled trials to evaluate efficacy. We conclude this phase with an early-stage product that demonstrates the desired impact.
We partner with others who are mission-aligned—nonprofits, start-ups, foundations, and others—to ensure that our products get into the hands of teens and young adults, and to track their impact over time. We share our learnings through peer-reviewed publications and open-source publishing platforms and media. Our goal is to contribute our findings and innovations to the body of scientific literature, while also sharing directly with the populations most affected, and those who use technology for social good.