Pathways to scale

Taking an innovation from a small-sized success story to something which delivers value at scale is not an easy one.  The Holy Grail of impact has a lot in common with that elusive quest pursued by King Arthur’s knights, taking them along strange paths, meeting with dragons and disasters and lasting a long time.  Similar odds of success too. Having spent a long time focused on the challenges facing start-ups the innovation spotlight is now moving to the question of scaling – and there’s a helpfully growing body of knowledge and codified experience around this theme. Including the important decision about which route to take for the journey to scale.  Choosing your preferred pathway to scale is a key first stage on the journey; fortunately there’s a wealth of experience available from previous attempts and some important lessons on which we can build.  In particular we need to see the choices available as lying on a spectrum where we trade off additional external involvement with giving up a degree of control. This podcast explores some of those options and their respective strengths and weaknessesYou can find a transcript hereAnd a video version here If you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innovation, then please visit my website here.You can find a rich variety of cases, tools, videos, activities and other resources - as well as my innovation blog.Or subscribe to my YouTube channel here

Om Podcasten

Innovation doesn't just happen. It's not like the cartoons - a lightbulb flashes on above someone's head and that's it. No - it's a journey and we need to understand how best to prepare for that journey, whatever kind of value we are trying to create. This podcast is about some useful lessons we might take on board to help develop our capabilities.For more, see my website:https://johnbessant.org