Getting to Scale: How to Bring Development Solutions to Millions of Poor People

Preface

vii Preface In 2004 the World Bank and Chinese government co-hosted a major conference in Shanghai to identify lessons on delivering global development solutions at scale. In the ensuing decade, a small group of development thinkers and practitioners has sought to explore this topic further. Among them are Brookings Institution scholars who have built a dedicated work program on scaling up to support new research, advise implementing organizations, and bring interested parties together from across the global development community. This volume captures some of the diversity of views and experiences within that community. Chapter authors include academics and practitioners, and among the latter, representatives of the public and private sectors. Some chapters contain personal accounts of success and failure; others offer rigorous analysis of what those in the field have been able to accomplish. While there is a wealth of ideas and experience packed into this volume, reflecting a decade of learning, our understanding of how to bring successful development interventions to scale remains limited. The editors hope that this work will spur further research, analysis, and experimentation to answer this question, which is pivotal to understanding how development cooperation, in all its forms, can have an impact commensurate with the scale of the challenges to be addressed. The volume is the outcome of an eighteen-month collaborative project between the Brookings Institution and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Earlier drafts of the volume’s chapters were discussed at a twoday workshop held in Washington, D.C., in January 2012. The editors are viii Preface grateful to the following individuals who attended the workshop and provided feedback on those drafts: Raj Desai, Alan Gelb, Nick Lovegrove, Paul Isenman, Jane Nelson, Dennis Whittle, Rohit Wanchoo, Mwangi Kimenyi, Molly Kinder, Noam Unger, Ernesto Araújo, Han Fraeters, Niloy Banerjee, Heather Baser, Navtej Dhillon, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, Tom Kelly, Keiichiro Nakazawa, Richard Ponzio, and Go Shimada. The editors would also like to thank Kathy Sierra for reviewing the entire volume; Natasha Ledlie, Veronika Penciakova, Steven Rocker, and Cory Smith for proofreading; and Janet Walker, Diane Hammond, and Susan Woollen from Brookings Institution Press. The chapters reflect the views of their authors and not the official position of any specific organization. This project would not have been possible without the financial and intellectual support of JICA—an agency that is acknowledged as a pioneer in promoting and institutionalizing a scaling-up agenda. ...