September
Sub-archives
Sep 08, 2010
Piloting and Upscaling: Both Crucial Stages in Social Innovation
In current development cooperation, there is a lot of discussion on project pilots versus project upscaling. I can understand that people say that there are enough pilots and that we should start investing in upscaling and diffusion. But it’s also vital not to forget pilot projects as a phase in social innovation.
In the process of social innovation piloting is stage 3. Stage 4 is sustaining and stage 5 is scaling and diffusion (source: the Open Book of Social Innovation) At IICD we have been working for several years not only on piloting but also on sustaining. Since a few years IICD is also working on the scaling and diffusion part of the process (see recent results in our 2009 on-line annual report.
In that way piloting is an essential stage in the social innovation process. Supporting a lot of pilot projects is a sign that a lot is happening in the sector and this is good news. But we should not get trapped in the piloting stage.
Building a multi-stakeholder partnership
From experience we can say that scaling and diffusion are processes that need multi-stakeholder involvement. And this is where it is becoming a bit more complex than just piloting. Getting several partners engaged is neither easy nor fast (I speak from experience) and we learned a lot about what is working and what is not working. For this reason we can only stress the importance of multi-stakeholder partnership building. But this is not easy and this may be a reason for developing lots of pilots.
The issue is that pilots should only be financed when there is already an idea of how to reach sustainability and how it could be scaled-up. In an article for MDG review that will be published by mid September, I also conclude that multi-stakeholder partnerships are key to success for scaling up.
IICD is an Executive Committee member of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP). In the near future GKP will facilitate the opportunity for members to build partnerships to scale-up, disseminate and replicate (SDR) their successful projects.
