News of the Scaling Community of Practice

We announced the creation of the Scaling Community of Practice here: http://www.msiworldwide.com/2015/02/scaling–up–community–of–practice–launched/.

A key conclusion highlighted in the summary of the February workshop was that participants expressed interest not only in a light umbrella CoP on scaling up approaches, issues and lessons in general, but also welcomed the development of sub-groups in specific sectoral or thematic areas.

From the feedback we have received from some of you and given the areas of engagement of your organizations, we believe that sub-groups might be formed on some or all of the following topics, with possible initial participants as listed:

We will follow up with you in the coming weeks to see whether you might be willing to participate in, or possibly lead, any of the above sub-groups of the Scaling CoP. Other groups might of course also form depending on your preferences. We believe, like everything else about the CoP, the creation and maintenance of subgroups will and should be entirely demand driven.

Scaling Up Events and Initiatives

MSI:

• A series of events will focus on Scaling Up in Fragile States, including: a workshop cohosted by World Vision, Microsoft and USAID on “Scaling Innovation and Promoting Market-Driven Approaches in Fragile States” and a two day workshop on “Scaling Up Development and Humanitarian Outcomes in Fragile States” to be co-hosted by MSI and World Vision in June 2015. The objective of the latter event is to modify MSI’s scaling up framework and toolkit to take into account the special needs and circumstances of fragile states.
• This year’s Summit on Youth Economic Opportunities in Washington, DC (October 6-8) will focus on “scale in practice” with separate tracks on Workforce Development, Enterprise Development and Financial Inclusion.
• A major study is currently ongoing, funded by USAID, on scaling up of agricultural technologies, including a range of case studies.

R4D:

• UNICEF and R4D have been teaming up to facilitate the scale-up of innovations in global education by identifying promising models and supporting their improvement and diffusion. The partnership collects and shares evidence on the effectiveness of selected innovations in an effort to help the global education community better identify interventions that work. http://r4d.org/focus–areas/accelerating–scale–promisinginnovations–education
• On World Pneumonia Day 2014, R4D joined the fight to end preventable deaths from pneumonia by supporting the scaling up of affordable, effective pneumonia treatment. Over the next three years, R4D’s Market Dynamics team will work with players across the pneumonia marketplace – manufacturers, countries, regulators, and major donors – to address the underlying causes which inhibit reliable access to a highly effective and inexpensive antibiotic – Amoxicillin DT –in high-burden countries such as Ethiopia and Nigeria. R4D will scale-up Amoxicillin DT in multiple geographies in Africa and establish an in-country presence to achieve this. http://r4d.org/about–us/press–room/worldpneumonia–day–2014–scaling–affordable–effective–treatment
• In November 2014 R4D announced a request for applications to become a Country or Regional Partner for a new center focused on scaling innovations in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. This center is a new initiative managed by R4D and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The center will identify the most promising and innovative WASH programs, policies and practices, and facilitate their scale-up by connecting these programs to others in the field, policy makers, researchers and potential funders, as well as key tools and services they need. http://r4d.org/aboutus/press–room/request–applications–partnership–r4d–scaling–wash–innovations

Other:

• Johannes Linn is providing advisory support to the Leadership, Learning and Innovation Vice Presidency of the World Bank for work on analyzing and scaling up successful social enterprise innovations in developing countries, with a special focus on India and Africa, and on health, education and water/sanitation.
• On April 17, 2015 Johannes participated in an event of the Global Delivery Initiative (GDI) hosted by the Global Practices Vice Presidency of the World Bank. GDI is a partnership of international development institutions, practitioners, implementing agencies, nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and the private sector. The GDI focuses on improved delivery and scaling up of development solutions. For more information see http://www.worldbank.org/reference/GDI/index.html.

Publications

We list here some publications that have come across our desks and that we think you might be interested in, in case you missed them. They all deal with scaling up successful development innovations across a wide range of topics.

ExpandNet (Ruth Simmons  et al.). The book – Scaling up Health Service Delivery. 2007.The practical guide – Practical Guidance for Scaling up Health Service Innovations. 2009. The nine step guide – Nine Steps for Developing a Scaling Up Strategy. 2010.  The pilot guide – Beginning with the End in Mind. 2011. All are found at http://www.expandnet.net/tools.htm

Nesta (Madeleine Gabriel).  Making it Big. Strategies for Scaling Social Innovations. Nesta. July 2014. http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/making–it–big–strategies–scaling–social–innovations

R4D. Pathways to Employability. Lessons and Case Studies for Closing the Youth Skills Gap.

October 2013 http://www.aaionline.org/wp–content/uploads/2014/09/R4D–Pathways–toEmployability.pdf

R4D. (Kanika Bahl, et al.).  Nutrition for a Better Tomorrow: Scaling Up Delivery of Micronutrient Powders for Infants and Young Children. 2013

http://r4d.org/sites/resultsfordevelopment.org/files/resources/R4D_Micronutrient%20Report.p df

R4D. (Larry Cooley and Johannes Linn). Taking Innovations to Scale: Methods, Applications and Lessons. 2014. http://r4d.org/about–us/press–room/taking–innovations–scale

UNDP.  Guidance Note: Scaling Up Development Programs. 2013.  http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/povertyreduction/participatory_localdevelopment/guidance–note—scaling–up–developmentprogrammes.html

Interviews

Interview with Elizabeth Holmes, “the Stanford University dropout, who talks about transforming a multibillion-dollar industry by setting up Theranos, a multibillion-dollar company, that has developed a method to draw and test a small amount of blood through a single pinprick to a finger instead of filling vials of blood from a more invasive needle stick in the arm. Theranos is rolling out the still relatively uncommon procedure in 8,200 Walgreens stores, and Holmes has a vision for making affordable, mostly painless, blood testing the norm throughout the world.” http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/elizabeth–holmes–i–wasnt–weighted–influences–i–couldntdo–it

Note on Sharing Information

We are developing a website to house and share information related to the community of practice. In the meantime, please feel free to share material using the CoP dropbox, or email [email protected]. We will also contact you in advance of the next Newsletter to ask for your input on events and publications.