Podcast
Freakonomics Radio
It was discussed as a guide to understanding how to scale ideas effectively, highlighting the importance of common sense and avoiding false positives when attempting to scale.
Most of us think that scalable ideas have some silver bullet feature, some quality that bestows a can't-miss appeal. That kind of thinking is fundamentally wrong. There is no single quality that disti...
— Episode: 494. Why Do Most Ideas Fail to Scale?
Episode: 494. Why Do Most Ideas Fail to Scale?
It was discussed as a guide to understanding how to scale ideas effectively, highlighting the importance of common sense and avoiding false positives when attempting to scale.
Most of us think that scalable ideas have some silver bullet feature, some quality that bestows a can't-miss appeal. That kind of thinking is fundamentally wrong. There is no single quality that distinguishes ideas that have the potential to succeed at scale from those that don't.
A pharmaceutical company develops a promising new sleep medication in its lab, but the drug doesn't live up to its promise in randomized trials. A small company in the Pacific Northwest successfully launches a product, then expands its distribution only to find that it sells poorly on the East Coast. These cases are all examples of a voltage drop.
So what I'm calling for here is to reverse the notion of evidence-based policy. When I talk about policy-based evidence, I'm saying at scale, with all of the flaws that the program or the institutions or the implementers will have, does my program still work?
We need to move from a mentality of creating and scaling to a mindset of scaling. We need to move from a mentality of creating evidence-based policy to one of producing policy-based evidence.
Voltage drops are what happens when the great electric charge of potential that drives people and organizations dissipates, leaving behind dashed hopes, not to mention squandered money, hard work, and time. And they are shockingly common.
Episode: Why Does the Richest Country in the World Have So...
It was mentioned at the end of the podcast that the experimental economist John List published this book on the topic of how to make good ideas great and make them scale.
The experimental economist John List, who's been on the show before, has just published a book called The Voltage Effect. How to make good ideas great and great ideas scale.
