Theme 5:
Play
a Long Game

Treat scaling as a living, evolving process aimed at reshaping relationships through large and diverse systems over the long term. Reaching population scale across geographies can take years, and both during and after scale is achieved circumstances and delivery contexts change. This, along with cost pressures, can lead to impact degrading over time if the program is simply transferred to a large implementing organization, without allowing for active management of its on-going evolution. Ideally, innovators should plan to continue to support the scaling journey in new roles, working to embed the program in large systems, supporting on-going learning and adaptation, and innovating to solve the new challenges that scale imposes at different stages.

• Tailor long-term plans and strategies to respond to the new contexts and populations to be served at scale, and to the specific scaling pathway the innovation will follow, e.g., scaling through large public delivery systems, scaling with large NGO’s, or scaling via social enterprise or social franchising models. In all cases, leadership challenges evolve with scale.
• The broad themes sketched in this outline – engagement, adaptation, learning, and collaborative leadership, with human dignity at the core – all apply, in changing ways, as scaling proceeds. To illustrate this, here are some examples of challenges and strategies along the journey when delivery is via a large government agency.
  • A ‘vertical’ phase, to gain approval and adoption by a large agency, requires relationship-building in a complex context. Aim to embed the innovation within the agency, so support will be sustained through leadership changes. Rigorous impact data is valuable in this context, but not the whole story. Attend to the larger ecosystem (discussed above) and to all stakeholders’ intrinsic motivations; energize adoption through demand from local stakeholders, based on the way the intervention respects the dignity and upgrades the status of the people who deliver and receive it.
  • Population scaling generally entails expanding geographically, with implications for delivery systems, cultural adaptation, and stakeholder involvement. It’s helpful to expand in stages, incorporating learning at each stage, but it’s also valuable to plan at the start for broad geographical reach over time.
  • As the innovation rolls out to larger populations, pressure will arise to reduce cost and simplify delivery. One promising approach to sustaining quality and resources is a demand-pull model, where new localities apply to receive and implement the program, rather than having the program assigned to them (supply push). Even where roll-out on this basis is impractical, focus on the demand side, including ’horizontal’ engagement with new local stakeholders who are influential in places where the program is scaling.
  • Rather than see impact degrade as scale gets large, make large numbers a friend of impact, by collecting and using the data large numbers allow and harvesting creativity and learning from the expanding front line. Examine variation in impacts and use the results to discover how to tailor delivery to different contexts and to identify and spread promising practices developed in the field.
  • In horizontal scaling, innovate to work out how to connect the program being scaled to new contexts without the innovator’s direct involvement. Find replicable ways to capture and disseminate what’s exciting about it. Examples include using videos, apps and peer ambassadors.
  • Work with agency partners to help the program become a way to energize the agency around shared goals, so that both the program and the agency adapt to the challenge of scaled-up delivery. Rather than rely on repeated influxes of energy from the outside, nurture energy from within agencies and communities.
  • As the innovator’s role evolves, it may be important to develop new funding relationships and a new sustainability model aligned with the innovator’s changing contribution along the scaling journey. Given the long-term nature of the innovator’s involvement, long-term funding, while challenging to achieve, is correspondingly valuable.