Scaling readiness, a key-step to scale impact
A new article by Belgium's development agency Enabel says promising innovations often demonstrate their value early on, yet too many never move beyond the pilot phase. As funding becomes more constrained and expectations for measurable impact increase, the real challenge—they argue— is no longer inventing solutions but ensuring they reach the people who need them most.
Many innovations stall in the so called “valley of death”, unable to secure the resources, partnerships and legitimacy required to scale. This is particularly the case in Africa’s poorest regions where financial returns are harder to achieve and development budgets are being cut.
To help address this gap, the Enabel Innovation Hub has joined forces with CGIAR, combining operational experience with a systematic, evidence based scaling approach . This collaboration materialised in testing and refining CGIAR’s Scaling Readiness approach in real development contexts with two EU-funded innovations. CGIAR, formerly Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, is the world’s largest public global agricultural innovation network, producing science for development in an accountable and transparent way.
While financial support alone is insufficient to bring innovations to scale, the Innovation Hub has long seen how access to capacity development and strong networks can make a decisive difference. This article highlights what the two projects have already learned through the process and how CGIAR’s methodology helped (re)shape their scaling strategies.