Talk about "scaling up" can imply that good practice is merely about copying, not creativity. "Seeding" may work better

“But will this scale?” If you attend conferences on tech or causes with any regularity, you will have heard this dread phrase barked out many times, like weedkiller cast on a garden patch.

The implication is that your idea or piece of ingenuity only has worth if it can propagate itself compulsively, and become the habit of an exponential curve of users or adherents. That is, it must scale. The anxiety is that such a spreading is homogenous, mimetic, a tidal wave of copying behaviours.

Yet is it right just to push back against “scaling up” with “small is all"? What we mean by “cosmo-localism” in the Alternative UK is exactly the possibility of local sentiment and ingenuity having a two-way relationship with a cosmopolitan global “cloud” of ideas and practice. The assumption is that there are creative interpretations at all levels, meaning evolution and variety is produced overall.

“Scale” probably needs even more of a challenge, so pervasive and gripping is the metaphor. So we were delighted to read this blog from one of our co-creators, Brian Slade, on the topic. His “TL;DR” (too long, don’t read) summary is:

We have a collective responsibility to meet the scale of the crises we face; this requires re-conceiving how we think about scale. This is an invitation to think not about scaling but about seeding: letting go of the colonial/capitalist logic of “bigger is better” to instead embrace nature’s logic of emergence. Scale is fractal, not linear. Whichever scale we choose to engage with (I, We, or World) this is an invitation to attend to the other levels as well. This moment asks us to choose leverage points that have the capacity to transform the system; we can no longer afford not to.

So immediately, what does is mean to go from scaling to seeding? Brain begins with a comment from consultant/coach Fiona Brooks, on

… the possibility of seeding (rather than scaling). If we’ve discovered something which nurtures thrivability in the wider system, is there a way we can create and share seeds of the ideas so they can take root in new ecologies in whatever form suits those environments? What might those seeds look like? How do we ensure they contain the essence of the ideas and enough initial nutrients to get them started, but keep them light enough to spread and adapt easily?

Brian builds on this, echoing our own I-We-World model of levels of intervening:

the seed itself (the idea/transformation we are trying to plant/instill… the thing we want to see emerge) - “I”
the set of relationships between that seed and its surrounding environment (Robin Wall Kimmerer writes beautifully about the interdependent web of reciprocity uniting the “three sisters” of corn, beans, and squash in many indigenous traditions across Turtle Island) - “We”
the soil in which it is planted (the systems or structural conditions that determine whether the seed flourishes or dies) - “World”

And of course: no single one of these dimensions is more important than the others; they are all essential. It offers to me an attractive way to choose how to engage at the scale where you feel called… while still connecting your work to the broader transformation we seek. Here’s Rowen:

The beauty of a seed is that it multiplies exponentially. It is a wonderful example of the natural abundance of the Earth and I think it is also a beautiful expression of the gift economy...The seeds teach us to be generous and to share our abundance with other people and this is really the true nature of things.

Scale is fractal, not linear

I recognize that this same seed metaphor is used within dominant systems: the concept of “seed” funding that emerged in the venture capital world in the early 2000s. I want to be clear that this is NOT the seed-to-scale I have in mind; a model that sees seed as merely a small starting point on a linear progression to something bigger, a mental model couched squarely in the very growth paradigm I am trying to transcend.

It’s also used within social change contexts; when googling I even found a “seed scale theory of social change” from Future Generations University dating to 1992, as well as a “scaling up” theory of large scale change from international development practitioner Larry Cooley in 2012 that also uses a seed metaphor. But these initiatives too, though containing useful contributions to the field, still approach scale from a mindset that assumes it is something to be managed, architected, controlled, somehow coaxed along a linear trajectory.

With due respect to Mr. Cooley’s framework, highlighted recently at a USAID innovation summit (my former employer…), in my view it still feeds into a dominant paradigm of saviorism in the context of international development.

A view that sees change agents as disconnected from the problem they are solving, and sees scale and solutions as linear progressions to be managed.

So while the metaphor holds, I want to be clear that the mindset underpinning the metaphor is very different… an example of a well-intentioned approach to scale that still emerges from colonial logic.

Scale understood from an emergence framework, by contrast, is fractal. That is, we don’t intervene here in order to do something there. As Warren Nilsson and Tana Paddock wrote in their study of social change organizations:

The social realities that they seek to change are not purely external. They are in the room. (Emphasis in original)

Solome Lemma of social movement facilitator Thousand Currents explains:

You cannot advance liberation or support social transformation if you have not transformed your own practices and the ways your organization does things. Change begins with the organization, and the people within it, embodying what change looks like. That is a requirement to be meaningful contributors to the type of change that justice movements are envisioning and building every day.

This is the core shift: the intervention is itself the transformation. Cause is effect. As adrienne maree brown wrote in her paradigm-shifting Emergent Strategy:

How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale… what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system. [Be the change you wish to see? - Ed.]

Eco-philosopher Glenn Albrecht reached the same conclusion in his study of living systems:

The microterraphthoric [micro-destructive] and the microterranascient [micro-creative] turn out to be hugely important to life at all scales so we must now pay them close attention.

This is what I mean by I, We, World: transformation is interdependent at all levels. [And here’s what A/UK means by I - We - World).

Focus on one level… attend to all: designing for scale

In a recent conversation hosted by Sam Chaltain’s Seed & Spark community, adrienne maree brown offered counsel that resonated with my own experience:

For each one of us, there’s a different scale at which we’re comfortable… Find a scale at which you can work.

To which I would add: while being mindful of the other scales. The most beautifully nourished soil grows nothing without a seed. The most perfect seed does not bear fruit without a hospitable environment for growth. As Rita Fierro wrote:

Because social change propagates fractally, whichever level you work at will affect the other levels.

This is the nuance to “small is all”; small is vitally important… but so are the other levels (all is all?). As Glenda Eoyang provocatively observed:

If it doesn't work at all scales, it doesn't really work at any of them.

One of my favorite practitioners of scale is Sanjay Purohit, co-founder of the India-based Societal Platform initiative. He explains:

There’s a difference between scaling what works, and building what works at scale.

I know I just critiqued the limitations of Larry Cooley’s framework, but he does offer some valuable insights, explaining:

When you design for scale, you need to pull everything out which is not absolutely essential. It’s a game of subtraction, not a game of addition.

I think this insight is foundational to working with emergence at scale. The core insight that has powerful implications for how we organize is this: complex transformation arises when each individual entity within a system follows a common set of simple principles. Those principles have to be simple and broadly applicable across diverse contexts.

This is easy to understand in the seed metaphor: we know that any seed needs a blend of quality air, water, and soil in order to germinate. From those three basic ingredients (just add light!), the entire world is born.