The former chief economist at Uber has sound advice for innovators who, after modest success with an idea or product, would ‘go big’ with it.
John List’s “The Voltage Effect” is marketed as a generic business title on how and whether to scale up an idea or product. Mr. List, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, explores why some ideas attain “voltage” and catch fire while others die out. This angle suggests that it will be another book about how to turn that great invention in your garage into the next Hewlett-Packard. But Mr. List is far too thoughtful to write something gimmicky or simple.
Scaling up can mean taking a product that appeals to a niche, local market and making it commercially viable to the masses. It can also apply to a belief or set of values, or a policy aimed at a small group of people that has the potential to work on a wider level. Mr. List has run many small-scale policy experiments, in particular with education. He knows that what makes a small charter school in the Chicago area succeed doesn’t always work when taken nationally. He also knows what products can scale—he was the chief economist at Uber and Lyft and has consulted with major corporations.
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal