Transition To Scale

The Problem

Innovation will be needed to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, yet relatively few seed innovations successfully and sustainably go to scale, which is sometimes called “pilotitis.” At the same time, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (PDF) recognized that, even in an ideal world, public funding alone will be insufficient to meet the Goals, and highlighted the importance of leveraging funding from both the private sector and low- and middle-income country governments.

Our Approach

Our Transition To Scale program launched in 2013 and is at the core of our comparative advantage, both as an innovation and as a global health organization. Transition To Scale funding helps catalyze the scale and sustainability of innovations with a proven impact on health. Transition To Scale is the primary channel through which innovations achieve outcomes and it is the common pathway through which Grand Challenges Canada’s seed investments transition to scale. An International Expert Review Panel (PDF) expressed the view that the Transition To Scale program will be critical to Grand Challenges Canada’s success over the next five years.

Grand Challenges Canada is uniquely structured to support and enable the scale-up of global health innovations via both private and public channels: social enterprises through commercial markets and public health models through government integration and/or uptake by non-profit players. Grand Challenges Canada seeks innovations that optimize science, social and business innovation that have the potential to sustainably scale in low- and middle-income countries.

The goal is to maximize the number of lives saved and improved of those most in need in low- and middle-income countries. As such, we increasingly model potential outcomes of innovations at transition-to-scale and we always track actual outcomes throughout the investment period. Finally, our Investment Committee has helped influence a shift towards a more diversified Transition To Scale portfolio that now includes an array of risk capital, in addition to grants.

Innovators must be invited by Grand Challenges Canada to submit an application for Transition to Scale funding. Unsolicited applications will not be accepted or considered for funding.

Progress Against the Challenge

To date, Grand Challenges Canada has invested over $189 million CAD in 237 Transition To Scale projects that are being implemented in 55 countries. This investment has leveraged over $399 million CAD in additional funding. Of these 237 projects, 59 are still continuing on the path to scale after Grand Challenges Canada funding ended. The Transition To Scale investment criteria and processes add value at each stage of the investment process, as outlined below.

The majority of actual lives improved, and all of the potential lives saved and improved achieved by Grand Challenges Canada, are through the Transition To Scale portfolio. We estimate that the innovations in the Transition To Scale pipeline will save between 492,000 and 1.78 million lives and improve between 20 million and 64 million lives by 2030.