What is a scaling path?

A working definition from MIT Sloan

scaling path (noun)

A strategy for attaining scale that provides leaders with a language and structure to reach their innovation goals.

When it comes to building new business opportunities, 80% of companies succeed in ideating and incubating new ideas, but only 16% successfully scale them, according to research by innovation advisory firm Change Logic.

Writing in MIT Sloan Management Review, Change Logic’s Andy Binns and Christine Griffin shared insights from their study of 30 successful and unsuccessful corporate ventures. They found that most successful companies follow a “scaling path” that provides leaders with a language and structure for attaining scale.

Scaling paths comprise:

  1. A clarity of ambition
  2. An understanding of assets needed to access the customers, capabilities, and capacity the new business requires
  3. A willingness to use a variety of techniques to assemble those assets into a coherent scaling strategy

This approach to scaling helps leaders of new ventures learn and iterate as they go, adding new options and eliminating those that become dead ends, the authors write.

The missing discipline behind failure to scale

Working Definitions: Innovation

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