be tested and the impacts evaluated, with a randomized approach wherever possible.


Drivers


Drivers push the scaling-up process forward, and research has identified those commonly at work:


• Ideas and Models. There has to be an idea or model that works at a small scale or has been promoted successfully elsewhere.


• Vision and leadership. A vision is needed to recognize that the scaling up of an idea is necessary, desirable, and feasible. Visionary leaders or champions often drive the scaling- up process.


• External catalysts. Political and economic crises or pressure from outside actors (donors, NGOs, and so forth) may drive the scaling-up process forward.


• Incentives and accountability. Incentives and accountability for results are needed to drive actors and institutions. They include rewards, competitions, and political pressure or community demand, peer reviews, and independent evaluations.


Spaces


Successful scaling up requires effective spaces—enabling environments—in which an initiative can grow:


• Fiscal/financial space. Fiscal and financial resources must be mobilized to support the scaled-up intervention, or the costs of the intervention need to be pushed down to match the available fiscal/financial space.


• Policy space. The policy and legal framework has to be adapted to support scaling up.


• Market space. When scaling up agricultural production, potential market constraints need to be considered and addressed in order to help avoid negative price and wage effects.


• Institutional capacity space. Institutional, organizational, and staff capacity must be created.


• Political space. Important stakeholders, whether initially supportive of or against the intervention, need to be motivated through outreach and suitable safeguards to ensure the political support for a scaled-up intervention.


• Natural resource/environmental space. The impact of the intervention on natural resources and the environment must be considered, harmful effects mitigated, and beneficial impacts promoted.


• Cultural space. Possible cultural obstacles or support mechanisms need to be identified and the intervention adapted to permit scaling.


• Partnership space. Partners need to be mobilized to join in the effort of scaling up.


• Learning space. Knowledge about what does and doesn’t work in scaling up must be harnessed through M&E, knowledge sharing, and training.


Scaling up agriculture, rural development, and nutrition


The authors of this set of policy briefs explore the experience of scaling up successful interventions in agriculture, rural development, and nutrition under five broad headings:


1. The role of rural community engagement 2. The importance of value chains 3. The intricacies of scaling up nutrition interventions 4. The lessons learned from institutional approaches 5. The experience of international aid donors The briefs provide vivid pictures of scaling up. There are no


blueprints for when and how to take interventions to scale, but the examples and experiences described offer important insights on how to address the key global issues of agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and rural poverty.


For further reading: L. Cooley and R. Kohl, Scaling Up—From Vision to Large-Scale Change: A Management Framework for Practitioners, www.msiworldwide.com/files/scalingup-framework. pdf; A. Hartmann and J. Linn, “Scaling Up: A Framework and Lessons for Development Effectiveness from Literature and Practice.” Wolfensohn Center for Development Working Paper 5, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2008; J. Linn, “Scaling Up with Aid: The Institutional Dimension,” in Catalyzing Development: A New Vision for Aid, ed. H. Kharas, K. Makino, and W. Jung (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2011).


Johannes F. Linn (jlinn@brookings.edu) is a senior resident scholar at Emerging Markets Forum and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.


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