A person today at the Social Innovation Camp was saying that as they don’t have yet a prototype of the product, why even consider thinking about scalability? May be the person is right but from a social investor perspective, I think the scalability should be built-in from the day one because;

(1) Social investor has limited resources, they want the highest impact for their little money. So they would focus on how scalable the impact of their potential investment in the venture has.

(2) Designing innovation / solution for 10, 1000, 10,000 and 1 million people would require a very different approach in the structure, elements and interactions within the system for its effectiveness, efficiency and resilience. Designing an affordable health for one million people is very different from designing for 1,000 people. Developing a software with hundred thousands of people would require a very specific organization of software, technology and technical infrastructure from day one.