MSI’s Scalability Checklist is “intended to stimulate, not substitute for, serious dialogue and analysis. It is best used not as a scorecard to determine what can be scaled up and what cannot, but as an aid to prioritize alternatives and as a means for identifying actions that can be taken to simplify the scaling up process.” (2016)
The checklist can be completed on your own but is best worked through with others involved in your innovation project. It doesn’t provide you with any guidance on how to scale, rather it provides a sense of how easy or difficult scaling will be. The checklist has 28 questions that are marked on a three-point scale across seven areas of focus:
- How convincing is the scale strategy?
- Is the intervention credible?
- How strong is the support for change?
- Does the model (solution) have relative advantage over existing practices?
- How easy is the model to transfer and adopt?
- How good is the fit between the intervention and the adopting organisation?
- Is there a sustainable source of funding?
Once you have worked through the checklist, you should take a step back and have a wider discussion about the implications of the results for setting your Scale Goal.