Effectively Scaling Up Promising Approaches: What Evidence is Necessary and How to Ensure It Is Used to Improve Lives

This text is from Chapter 25 of the Oxford Handbook of Program Design and Implementation Evaluation.

By Annie Duflo, Heidi McAnnally-Linz, Anu Rangarajan

Abstract

This chapter describes an approach to scale-up that focuses on delivering effective programs to increase the reach of program services. Program scale-up can occur along a number of dimensions—organizations can expand their geographic coverage, extend their time horizon, increase the number served within their existing service area, provide new services to existing clients, begin serving new groups of clients, or apply tested concepts to new problems. Similarly, programs can achieve scale by expansion or replication, and through strategic collaboration with a range of partners. This chapter lays out a framework for what types of interventions or concepts should be considered for scale-up. The chapter suggests ways to bring in measurement and research across the various stages in the process of scale-up, and discusses how to embed co-creation and ongoing learning into existing systems to enable effective scaling.