GIW 2017

While the body of rigorous evidence about what works in development has grown substantially over the past two decades, there are many fewer examples of that evidence being iterated on, adapted, and implemented at large scale. Why? In part, because evidence generation and scale-up are very different capabilities, and the messy, often politically, organizationally, operationally complex process of delivering impact at scale is hard. Behind some of the best examples of scale-up of evidence-based innovations are strong collaborations between, on the one hand, researchers committed to impact at scale and, on the other hand, social entrepreneurs committed to grounding their work in rigorous evidence - with often times both working hand-in-hand to support a government or other local partner. Such collaborations are facilitating the growth of many high-impact interventions and have led to substantial improvements in the lives of millions. Such partnerships offer researchers opportune testing grounds for generating early evidence about a new innovation as well as an ongoing partner for testing at scale. Meanwhile, these collaborations provide evidence-based social entrepreneurs new insights about their work, allowing them to iterate on and strengthen their programs, as well as the credibility and validation that can come from opening one’s model to rigorous testing. These partnerships are successfully putting evidence into action, identifying and testing high-impact, pro-poor innovations and co-creating cost-effective programs for massive scale. Join us to hear from two pairs of social entrepreneur / researcher collaborators to hear about the ground-breaking work on which they are collaborating - “No Lean Season” and “Teaching at the Right Level” - and the opportunities and challenges of such partnerships.

Watch the video here.