The enabling conditions for successful scaling: An overv rview - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The enabling conditions for successful scaling: An overv rview

Presentation at Purdue University 27 September 2018 Johannes F. Linn jlinn@brookings.edu

Picture credit: IFAD

Scaling is part of an iterative process

• f innovation-learning-scaling up

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Six scaling stages help define a scaling pathway from idea to impact at scale

How is this helpful?

• Links research with implementation/application
• Provides a common framework to map activities, deploy instruments,

sequence interventions, and plan for systematic exit/hand-off

• Enhances communication and collaboration among potential partners

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Source: IDIA

Scaling up pathway -- innovation, vision

• f scale and enabling conditions

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Six key questions

• 1. What’s the problem to be solved, the vision and target of

scale?

• 2. What ideas, innovations or models are to be scaled up?
• 3. What is the pathway to scale?
• commercial, public, hybrid
• horizontal, vertical, functional
• expansion, replication, diffusion
• 4. What about the enabling conditions?
• 5. How about the sequencing of key steps?
• 6. Does M&E support learning for scaling up?

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Drilling down deeper on enabling conditions

• Assessing the relevant enabling conditions is a key aspect of scaling up

assessments.

• Continuum of drivers-barriers (spaces)
• Internal (to innovator/implementer/funder) v. external (environment,

ecosystem)

• Enabling conditions are context specific.
• Relevant enabling conditions and their impact may change over the course
• f the scaling pathway – they have to be monitored and reevaluated

continuously/intermittently throughout.

• Enabling conditions for sustainability and scalability are closely related, but

need to be assessed separately.

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Barrier Driver

+ _

Drivers

• Idea that works + Vision of scale = Essential preconditions, but

not sufficient

• Champions/leadership (Borlaug, Yunnus, Aga Khan, etc.)
• Weak leadership or a strong opponent can act as a barrier
• A champion’s/leader’s exit can cripple scaling (WB)
• Within funding institutions also (IFAD)
• Incentives and accountability (profits, taxes/subsidies,

regulations, competitions, RBF)

• Negative incentives (taxes, regulations, etc.) can be a problem; short

term positive incentives (subsidies) can be barrier in longer term

• External v. internal incentives (to innovators/implementers and funders)
• Incentives need to be matched by accountability (transparency,

information, M&E) to be effective

• Link to policy space

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Drivers (ctd.)

• Market and/or community demand
• Demonstration effect at market or community level a powerful force
• Lack of demand can be a major barrier (cassava in W-Africa)
• Export demand a potential safety valve (but import competition a possible

barrier)

• Link to policy space
• External Factors (crises, donors, EU accession)

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Spaces (or barriers to be removed)

• Political space
• Winners and losers – supporters and opponents (stakeholder analysis)
• Changes over course of scaling process (SEWA, education in Kenya)
• Need to explicitly assess and address – evidence and advocacy (Progresa-

Oportunidades)

• Internal institutional politics matter (for innovators/implementers and

funders)

• Policy space
• Legal/regulatory (dis)incentives (taxes, subsidies, etc.)
• Access to domestic and foreign markets for inputs and outputs in value

chain

• Operational policies of implementing and funding institutions (link to

institutional space)

• Policies can also be entry point for scaling, i.e., systems change, but policy

reform needs continuity and monitoring in implementation

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Spaces (ctd.)

• Fiscal/financial space
• Financial sustainability and scalability of the business model
• Costs (down, up, steady)
• Revenues (internal v external–fiscal/donor; predictability)
• For funders:
• How long to stay engaged and what happens after exit?
• How to tailor financing instruments to different scaling stages?
• Institutional space
• Institutional commitment and capacity to scale (vision and strategy,
• perational policies, staffing, incentives, training, etc. for implementors and

funders)

• Institutional transitions from innovation to operating at scale
• Facilitating institutions (role of funders as facilitators)

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Spaces (ctd.)

• Partnership space
• Without partners, no scale
• Bring them in early (avoid NIH syndrome)
• But choose/manage them carefully – partnerships aren’t easy/costless
• Both implementers and funders have to partner
• Appropriate partners will change across the innovation-scaling stages
• Environmental space
• Interventions at scale may impact environment or run into natural resource

constraints – esp. in agriculture (water, soil)

• Scaling up climate smart interventions – the environmental dimension is

critical

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Spaces (ctd.)

• Cultural space
• Need to consider/address possible cultural constraints (including role of

traditional practices and beliefs, risk aversion, gender roles, ethnic divisions, etc.)

• Information space
• Generating and using “internal” data through M&E
• Using IT tools, RCTs, etc.
• Not only on impact, but also on enabling conditions
• Accessing and sharing “external” data through information scanning,

networking, etc.

• A scaling perspective provides greater incentives for effective information

management (benefits of M&E are internalized)

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Use as a diagnostic tool: IFAD’s “Framing Questions”

• IFAD developed (with Brookings) a

systematic scaling approach, including

• ”Framing questions” that focused on

ideas, vision, drivers, spaces, pathways and IFAD’s role

• Incorporated scaling systematically in

its operational policies and M&E

• In 2017 carried out a corporate

evaluation of progress with mainstreaming scaling up approach

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Use as a dia iagnostic tool: : An example of f a scali ling up review of f the UNDP country ry Program in in Taji jikistan

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Excellent Good Partial

Not relevant/ No information

Source: J.Linn for UNDP

A dia iagnostic tool for assessin ing th the sc scali ling up content of f UNDP projects and programs in in four countrie ies

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Excellent Good Partial

Minimally considered

Legend :

Thank you!

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