Success at scale: six suggestions from implementation and policy sciences TECK-HUA HO* National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119077 CHING LEONG National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119077 CATHERINE YEUNG 1 Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong Abstract: Very often, significantly smaller benefits are observed in final policy outcomes than are indicated by initial research discoveries. Al-Ubaydli et al. have identified a poor understanding of the ‘science of scaling’ as the underlying cause of this discrepancy. They propose a framework to increase our understanding of the science of scaling. We build on this framework by making six specific suggestions capturing three key ideas. First, researchers need to move away from their preoccupation with general theoretical models and focus on subject-specific theories of intervention, leading to individualized treatments. Second, there should be greater collaboration between researchers and policymakers, as well as more transparency in reporting findings, to ensure that the research environment is more representative of the policy environment. Third, researchers should recognize that policymakers do not always maximize social welfare; policymakers may have their own short-term incentives. Therefore, researchers must consider policymakers’ short-term incentives in designing interventions in order to increase the chances of a research intervention becoming a policy. Submitted 31 October 2019; accepted 6 April 2020 Introduction What could be more sensible than to try at a small scale what we would like to do at a large one? As US Supreme Court associate justice Louis Brandeis said (New State Ice Company v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 1932), “[A] single cour- ageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel * Correspondence to: National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119077 E-mail: teck@nus.edu.sg. 1 Authors are listed in alphabetical order. All authors contributed equally. Behavioural Public Policy, Page 1 of 9 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/bpp.2020.20 1 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2020.20 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 137.132.222.33, on 09 Jul 2020 at 11:43:21, subject to the Cambridge Core