Fantastic new article on Vox on our favorite topic: “Scaling up good ideas is really, really hard — and we’re starting to figure out why”
The article hits on a few our favorite, and often repeated, maxims. For example, how difficult it is to go from piloting with NGO staff to scaling with government staff:
“When a program scales, it has to hire and train many new people — or in some cases transition to using government resources and civil servants. And that can change a program’s effectiveness. “You turn over a program from a highly motivated NGO…. to people who know less about it and are less driven to see it succeed — or informed about what it will take. A lot can be lost in transmission”[Mushfiq Mobarak – Yale’s Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale].
Another great point for practitioners to think about at the design phase (that isn’t often cited) is the equilibrium effect – for example, if you take a great worker training program to scale, you might actually drive down wages if there are now too many skilled workers available. While CARE is careful to consider the impact of our programs on markets, it can be difficult to accurately predict unintended consequences at scale. Being mindful of the equilibrium effect while designing for scale can help us set appropriate targets.
Check out the full article here: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/10/18127987/global-health-poverty-development-scaling-economics-research-yrise-yale
