The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale

The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale by John A. List

Why do some ideas that seem good fail spectacularly at scale? What is the key to knowing what will succeed as it grows. It is important to understand why things succeed. Sometimes a key part of success is not scalable. A pilot school that succeeds by only hiring the top 1% of teachers could not scale, because it is limited to 1% of teaching population. A program that worked well with average teachers would be a much better candidate. 

You must also understand what audience you are reaching. A product may appear to be successful and ready for a large roll out. However, in analyzing, you many discover that everyone has been a Latvian-American fan of 1970s progressive metal music. This narrow demographic may be maxed out. If a product or service cannot be expanded to other demographics, it may be best not to scale out.

The book explores many other reasons why scaling has succeeded or failed. Examples are abundant (though they felt more common on the failure side.) He had consulted with the government, ridesharing companies and local schools, and provided plenty of examples from these areas.