Thinks Insight & Strategy
Thinks Insight & Strategy is a London-based insight and strategy consultancy that helps governments, regulators, charities, unions and companies understand what people think, feel and do — and what to do about it. Until February 2023 it was known as BritainThinks, a name it had carried since its founding in 2010, together with an international arm called WorldThinks. The two combined under the single brand Thinks Insight & Strategy to reflect the global nature of the work and the breadth of services on offer. Based at Somerset House in London, the agency is majority owned by an employee ownership trust and is a certified B Corporation, and its research — on topics from financial regulation to housing and workers' rights — is regularly reported across the UK media.
Founding and founders
The business was established in 2010 by Viki Cooke, Deborah Mattinson and Ben Shimshon. Mattinson was already one of Britain's best-known qualitative researchers, associated with the focus group methods that became central to modern political campaigning, and the new firm — originally trading under the BritainThinks name — built its reputation on depth interviews, focus groups and deliberative research with the public. Cooke became the agency's chair, Shimshon its managing partner, and Mattinson remained a leading figure in the business until she later left. The founding trio's proposition was that clients needed more than data: they needed researchers who would stay involved long enough to turn findings into strategy, a positioning reflected first in the BritainThinks brand and then, more explicitly, in the Thinks name.
The 2023 rebrand
On 24 February 2023, Research Live reported that BritainThinks and its subsidiary WorldThinks had combined under the new branding of Thinks Insight & Strategy, with a new logo, website and social media identity implemented immediately. The company's registered name remained CM Monitor (Britain Thinks) Limited for the time being. The agency said the change better reflected the global nature of its business and the breadth of its services, and created a single point of contact for clients. It stressed that nothing else changed: the work, staff and services continued as before. Chair Viki Cooke described the new brand as the platform the firm needed to give clients seamless, bespoke and strategically focused advice anywhere in the world, while Ben Shimshon said the name reflected how the agency had evolved and pointed to its recently launched behavioural practice and growing international footprint.
Employee ownership and B Corp status
BritainThinks became employee-owned in 2020, with the majority of the business held by an employee ownership trust — a structure the agency has kept at the centre of its identity since. Staff at every level hold a stake in the business, and the trust's board has been chaired by Mark Smith, a former chief financial officer at the Chime group. Alongside employee ownership, Thinks is a certified B Corporation, committing it to assessed standards of social and environmental performance; its operations partner leads its B Corp certification and sustainability work. For clients in the public and voluntary sectors especially, this ownership and ethical profile is part of the offer: a research partner whose own governance is designed to demonstrate the values it often studies in others.
What the agency does
Thinks offers qualitative and quantitative research, strategic consultancy, dialogue and deliberation work, and a behavioural insight and advisory practice that expanded notably during 2023. Its qualitative researchers run focus groups, depth interviews and ethnographic-style studies; its quantitative team designs and analyses surveys, an area it strengthened with senior hires experienced in statistical methods and new analytical tools. The behavioural practice draws on experimental design and behavioural science to test how people actually respond to policies, messages and services, rather than how they say they will. Across all of these, the agency's stated model is to pair insight with strategy — delivering findings alongside counsel on what decisions they should drive.
Clients and public work
The agency's client list spans the public, regulatory and voluntary sectors. It is based at Somerset House and works with clients including the Financial Conduct Authority, the housing and homelessness charity Shelter, and the Trades Union Congress. Such clients commission research on questions with direct news value — how consumers experience financial services, how the public understands the housing crisis, how workers view their rights and conditions — and the results are frequently published and reported. Because so many of its projects are designed for publication, Thinks functions in part as a news-generating research agency: its studies give journalists quantified, quotable evidence about public attitudes on the day's contested questions.
Leadership and growth
In October 2023 the agency formalised a new leadership structure. Ben Shimshon, co-founder and managing partner for the previous three years, was appointed chief executive, leading the development and delivery of company strategy and reporting to chair Viki Cooke and the employee ownership trust board. Richenda Devereux, who had joined in 2019 and overseen the modernisation of project management, was promoted to operations partner. The year also saw substantial hiring: research directors and associate directors arrived from agencies including Ipsos, Shift Insight, Quantum Consumer Solutions, Trinity McQueen and Cowry Consulting, alongside staff with backgrounds in government social research at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Office for National Statistics. Shimshon described 2023 as a transformative year in which the rebrand, the expanded behavioural offer and recruitment reinforced one another.
From BritainThinks to a global practice
The old brand contained a deliberate ambiguity: BritainThinks traded on national insight while WorldThinks handled international briefs. Folding the two together acknowledged that the questions clients bring — climate attitudes, trust in institutions, responses to new technology — rarely stop at borders, and that the agency was increasingly coordinating research across countries for foundations, regulators and multinational organisations. The rebrand therefore marked a shift in self-presentation from a boutique British qual shop to a global insight consultancy, while retaining the employee-owned structure and the London base at Somerset House. For media users of its research, the practical effect was simple: studies that might once have appeared under two different names now carry one.
Research approach
The agency's reputation was built on qualitative craft — the moderated conversation, carefully recruited, that reveals the language and logic behind public attitudes. Its published work combines that tradition with deliberative methods, in which participants are given information and time to reason together before conclusions are drawn, and with quantitative measurement where prevalence matters. The addition of a behavioural practice added a third leg: experiments and applied behavioural science to test interventions. This mixed-method identity is common among leading London research agencies, but Thinks has been explicit that method follows strategy — the research design is chosen for the decision the client faces, and the deliverable is advice, not just a deck of findings.
Place in the UK research landscape
Thinks competes in a crowded London market that includes global research groups, specialist polling firms and strategy consultancies. Its distinguishing marks are its founding generation's political-research pedigree, its employee-owned and B Corp status, and its concentration on public, regulatory and social questions rather than fast-moving consumer goods. Within this directory it sits among the agencies because its output feeds the news cycle: FCA studies on consumer experience, Shelter research on housing and TUC work on employment all enter public debate through media coverage, and the Thinks name is cited as the authority behind the numbers. Its trajectory since 2010 — boutique launch, employee buyout, rebrand, leadership renewal — mirrors the maturation of the UK insight industry itself.
At a glance
Thinks Insight & Strategy is a London insight consultancy based at Somerset House, founded in 2010 as BritainThinks by Viki Cooke, Deborah Mattinson and Ben Shimshon. It became employee-owned in 2020, merged its BritainThinks and WorldThinks brands under the Thinks name in February 2023, and is a certified B Corporation. Led by chief executive Ben Shimshon and chair Viki Cooke, it provides qualitative, quantitative, deliberative and behavioural research for clients including the Financial Conduct Authority, Shelter and the Trades Union Congress. Its official website is thinksinsight.com.
