Scaling Impact: Innovation for the Public Good

Scaling Research for Social Impact introduces a new and practical framework for scaling the positive social impact of research in the Global South. The book aims to challenge the more-is-better paradigm of scale, instead encouraging researchers to think differently and to innovate, providing them with practical tools for putting their vision into action. For organizations working to change the world for the better, producing the greatest positive impact for the greatest number of people is a fundamental pursuit. Much of the literature on scaling focuses on how to grow the capacity of organizations to deliver innovations. Yet, we regularly witness how programs, policies, and products that are proven to work at one scale stumble when implemented at another. The book draws on past and current scaling strategies conducted by Canada's International Development Research Centre throughout the Global South to highlight different characteristics of the pathway to scale, such as the role of partnerships, interdisciplinarity, the size of a project, and the variety of strategies according to the type of impact at scale (policy, method, product or technology, practice, skill, a program, etc.). The book concludes by arguing that this framework is transferable across organizations of many types which aim to achieve positive social impact, and provides actionable principles and tools to help organizations plan, monitor, and evaluate their scaling strategies. This book will be useful to development practitioners and professionals, students, evaluators, policy makers, and researchers.