How to roll out big ideas and avoid the Museum of Failure

There are five vital signs to consider when thinking about whether an idea, policy or product can scale.

1. Watch out for false positives.
2. Consider if you're misjudging the representativeness of the demographic.
3. Understand the constraints you will have at scale before you scale it.
4. Watch for unintended consequences.
5. Consider the business side and costs of scaling.

An idea may look promising at first, but when it is rigorously tested, the results may fail to replicate.

If you find a good result in one area, it doesn't mean you should roll it out everywhere. First replicate it in that area to ensure it's a true result, then try it out in other markets. It means you should constantly prod at your idea to ensure it's a valid result.

McDonald's erroneously used a focus group to convince themselves to roll out the Arch Deluxe.

It was indeed popular with a small group of loyal customers, but that was not the future target of the company.

It is vital to evaluate if your initial success depends on unscalable ingredients.

For example, it would be a mistake to use ample resources to hire the best preschool teachers, then expect that their positive results would be replicated when the curricula they use was scaled nationwide.

Understand the constraints you're going to have at scale before you scale it.

When Uber attempted to raise the incomes of its drivers by increasing its base fares, it worked at first, but within six weeks, earnings fell back down to what they were.

The reason is that the opportunity of making more money on the app drew more people to drive for Uber, resulting in each driver getting fewer trips overall.

At scale, the well-intended policy didn't work as intended.

Identify if your product has economies of scale.

When you scale your operation, does it get cheaper to produce it? For example, building a factory costs money up front, and the first couple of devices will reflect that. But, over time, it will become cheaper to produce because the cost of the building is spread out more.