Scaling of innovations is an industrial and social process that leads to widespread use of an

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

. The potential of a production system to undergo this process is called its "

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work. One definition for software systems specifies that this may be done by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that ...

". Scaling is regarded the last step after the discovery,

proof of concept A proof of concept (POC or PoC), also known as proof of principle, is an inchoate realization of a certain idea or method in order to demonstrate its feasibility or viability. A proof of concept is usually small and may or may not be complete ...

and piloting of an innovation. In business it is often used as maximizing operational scale of the product. This technology, or project-focused scaling takes products and services as the point of departure and wants to see those to go scale. In the

public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, pu ...

, and for example in

development aid Development aid (or development cooperation) is a type of aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political International development, development of developing countries. It is distinguishe ...

, the desired impact is the point of departure and whatever leads to more impact is scaled (usually in the form of a range of innovations). However, some authors recognize that the public sector often uses the business way of scaling to reach impact, leading to disillusionment and doing more harm than good. Sometimes, scaling is seen as a process towards sustainable systems change at scale, where sustainability, systems change and responsible scaling are just as important as “reaching many”.

Dimensions

Although scaling is often associated only with “more, better, bigger” it is important to consider that it has three dimensions: * ''Scaling out'' involves expanding the geographical spread, or reach, of a technology or practice over time. It is associated with quantitative processes like replication, expansion, extension, adoption, dissemination, transfer of technology, mainstreaming, and multiplication . * ''Scaling up'' entails creating the necessary social and institutional preconditions for scaling out to happen efficiently.(Gündel et al., 2001) It is associated with qualitative processes like transition, institutionalizations, transformation, integration, evolution, and development. * ''Scaling deep'' deals with the notion that sustainable and transformative impact is achieved only “when people´s hearts and minds, their values and cultural practices and the quality of relationships they have are transformed”, to make the use of the innovation the new routine.

Tools

The first toolkit on scaling innovations was made available for practitioners in 2006 by Cooley and Kohl. It was called the Scaling Up Management (SUM) Framework, it was subsequently refined and expanded in Editions 2 and 3, both of which include the MSI Scalability Assessment Tool. USAID adapted the latter in 2018 to the Agricultural Scalability Assessment Tool (ASAT). Other donors such as the

International Fund for Agricultural Development The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialised agency of the United Nations that works to address poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. It is the on ...

(IFAD), the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...

(WHO), and GIZ have also developed toolkits. Most recently, the

International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (known – even in English – by its Spanish acronym CIMMYT for ''Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo'') is a non-profit research-for-development organization that develops ...

(CIMMYT) and the PPPLabPPPLab
/ref> developed the Scaling Scan. All these frameworks assign the difficulty of scaling innovations to a lack of clarity about what is required to achieve sustained results beyond smaller pilot programs. The tools help simplify and explain the complexities of scaling and guide users to systematically think through key elements, ingredients, or success factors.

References

{{Reflist International development Management