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The voltage effect is a guide to how to get rid of bad ideas and make the good ones better.
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I have a show on Saturdays, I clean up while listening to podcasts. One of my favorite Saturday listening podcasts is Freconimics. In a recent episode, they interviewed John List about his book, Voltage Effect: How to Scale Great Ideas Great and Great Ideas.
After I heard that interview, I had to get a copy.
Why many ideas scale fail
Ahhhh … “scaling” is your business. Every entrepreneur’s dream. But why fail to scale so many ideas? This is the key question. “Voltage effect“
The celebrity entrepreneurial world has turned the scaling of your business into some kind of holy grail. Scaling has become a buzzword without a complete understanding of how to set yourself up for success.
And here it is. “Voltage effect “ Comes
The public list reverses the assumption
John List is a professor at the University of Chicago, where he teamed up with Steven Levitt, co-author of Freonomics. With this kind of partnership, you know that the book and the ideas inside will tickle your brain and force you to look at things from a new perspective.
But the list is more than a professor. He gained considerable court experience in scaling during the early 2000s, when he served on the White House Economic Advisory Council under the Bush administration.
It was here that he designed the policies that would have the greatest positive impact on the largest number of American citizens at a fair price. He was also the chief economist at Uber and later in the elevator – two startups that have almost moved on to science.
The mantra of the list is “The only ideas that can have a significant impact on human life should be followed. And to translate an idea into a wide range of effects, it needs to be scaled to scale.“
How the voltage effect works
The basic premise of the book is: concepts only scale if their list is called “voltage”. And, in order to scale successfully, you need to know if the concept can scale and if so, what are the key factors involved in success.
In the first part of the book, the list discusses whether your idea is measurable. He introduces what he calls the five essential signs;
- False positive: where it did not have voltage in the first place. In other words, it is an idea that worked in one situation, but did not work in another.
- Misjudging the representation of an initial population or situation: This is when the initial concept is implemented with the “best” people, tools or management – which is difficult to duplicate and replicate on scale.
- Spillovers: It often happens when you try to solve a problem, but the situation (and human behavior) undo what you tried to scale.
- Rising costs: Teachers’ salaries are a great example. Say you want to attract the best educators to the school, but to do that you have to pay teachers $ 200,000. It is not measurable.
The second part of the book explores the elements to successfully scale an idea. Here are four “secrets” to list scaling:
- Find the right incentive: Money can’t always buy behavior change. Instead, think of social stimuli, or unconscious motivations, such as the fear of missing or losing something.
- Don’t just use average: average doesn’t tell you much about scaling. Real gold is found in the margins.
- Know when to leave: Consider what opportunities you are leaving. Are you being pushed or pulled out? See the pull for better opportunities and change every six months.
- Create a scaling culture: If you want to scale, you need to have a culture that supports scaling. It needs to be diverse, inclusive and sustainable
Scale or not scale
The best part is – there is no need to scale everything! That’s right. There are people who are not measurable, some products or services are not designed to be intentionally scaled. In other words, scalability is not for everyone.
Voltage effect A guide to how to get rid of bad ideas and make the good ones better. So, whether you scale or not, understanding the strategies behind scalability will help you in all aspects of your business.
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Photo: amazon
