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SSRN
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Four Ways to Scale Up: Smart, Dumb, Forced, and Fumbled

SSRN, ISSN: 1556-5068
2021
  • 2
    Citations
  • 18,712
    Usage
  • 53
    Captures
  • 1
    Mentions
  • 12
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    2
    • Citation Indexes
      2
  • Usage
    18,712
    • Abstract Views
      14,405
    • Downloads
      4,307
  • Captures
    53
    • Readers
      52
    • Exports-Saves
      1
      • SSRN
        1
  • Mentions
    1
    • News Mentions
      1
      • 1
  • Social Media
    12
    • Shares, Likes & Comments
      12
      • Facebook
        12
  • Ratings
    • Download Rank
      4,784

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Article Description

Scale-up is the process of growing a venture in size. The paper identifies modularity and speed as keys to successful scale-up. On that basis four types of scale-up are identified: Smart, dumb, forced, and fumbled. Smart scale-up combines modularity and speed. Dumb scale-up is bespoke and slow, and very common. The paper presents examples of each type of scale-up, explaining why they were successful or not. Whether you are a small startup or Elon Musk trying to grow Tesla and SpaceX or Jeff Bezos scaling up Amazon – or you are the US, UK, Chinese, or other government trying to increase power production, expand your infrastructure, or make your health, education, and social services work better – modularity and speed are the answer to effective delivery, or so the paper argues. How well you deal with modularity and speed decides whether your efforts succeed or fail. Most ventures, existing or planned, are neither fully smart nor fully dumb, but have elements of both. Successful organizations work to tip the balance towards smart by (a) introducing elements of smart scale-up into existing ventures and (b) starting new, fully smart-scaled ventures, to make themselves less dumb and ever smarter.

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