In his new book,The Voltage: Effect How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale, List reveals why some ideas take off (or scale) and why others fall flat using a mix of original research and real-world anecdotes from working with companies like Uber, Lyft, and Tinder.

His ideas are brought to life in this engaging presentation with actionable, science-backed take-aways for leaders, teams, and organizations in all sectors looking to take their ideas to the next level.

This event is co-hosted with the School of Public Policy and will be virtual. Please click the link below to join the webinar:

• https://gatech.zoom.us/j/94180624331?pwd=aUJ5NkVrelk3eXVkTkZHaFdpSDZpUT09
• Passcode: 046345

The Voltage Effect in Behavioral Economics

Behavioral Economics (BE) and lab/field experiments in the last several decades have contributed to the deepening scientific knowledge by uncovering mechanisms, producing key interventions, and estimating program effects.

This represented a logical first step, as experimentalists sought to provide deeper empirical insights and theoretical tests as part of the credibility revolution of the 1990s. Nevertheless, what has been lacking is a scientific understanding of how to make optimal use of the scientific insights generated for policy purposes.

List denotes this as the “scale-up” problem, which revolves around several important questions, such as:

• Do the BE insights we find in the petri dish scale to larger markets and settings?
• When we scale the BE intervention to broader and larger populations, should we expect the same level of efficacy that we observed in the small-scale setting?
• If not, then what are the important threats to scalability?
• What can the researcher do from the beginning of their scholarly pursuit to ensure eventual scalability and avoid voltage drops?