Read also:
- Transforming a changemaker idea into an impact project
- Supporting an Existing Project Towards Impact
What are your criteria to identify whether a project is “scalable” (or should remain local/niche)?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We distinguish four main direct pathways to scalability: internal growth, which relies on the progressive expansion of the project within its current scope; replicability, where the model can be reproduced in other contexts or territories; duplicability, which allows other actors to adopt the methodology or model; and finally franchises, which ensure a structured and controlled scale-up. Our criteria include cultural adaptability, resilience to shocks, the solidity of the business model, but also alignment with root causes and not only symptoms. We also draw on innovative project management methods from industry and start-ups — such as the Lean ScaleUp approach or the SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) — to assess whether the project can handle scaling without losing its essence. But we also find the increase of activity through repercussion effects: when a project triggers indirect dynamics that generate new activities, new markets, or new collaborations without the initial organization needing to pilot them directly. This is, for example, the case when an innovation inspires other actors to spontaneously reproduce or adapt the model, or when the results obtained create an ecosystem around the project, producing organic and exponential growth.
How do you help a project test different business models before choosing the most viable one?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We work through successive iterations. An idea is first developed as a draft, then turned into several competing preliminary projects. These versions are compared and challenged through rich formats: contradictory debates, world cafés, design thinking, crowd innovation. The best practices from each prototype are integrated into a final preliminary project, which brings together the “best success” of all the options tested. This approach is deliberately interactive and contradictory: it allows teams to concretely measure the viability of each model, but also to build a final proposal that does not rest on a single intuition but on a collective, robust, and tested process.
What resources do you provide for scaling up?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We provide a very dense ecosystem: foundations, incubators, global federations, citizen science networks, fab labs, investors, communication agencies, business development firms. Each of the 7 annual international conferences that make up the Forum is designed as a solutions laboratory, with an action-oriented statement that forces focus on implementation. Concretely, this also takes the form of high-level networking meals, coaching and mentoring mandates entrusted to experts, seed philanthropy programs that prepare projects to receive hybrid financing, and blended finance tools to secure their scale-up. Everything is done so that projects quickly move from idea to action, then from local to global.
How do you support the search for strategic partnerships?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ The Forum relies on an impressive community: more than 8,000 former participants to date, many of whom now occupy even more strategic positions than at the time of their first participation, as well as 2,500 high-level technical and methodological experts, mobilized through Objectif Sciences International, the Geneva Foundation for the Future, and the Geneva Forum. We engage the networks of the United Nations, international organizations, global sectoral federations, and global corporations. A leader who comes to the Forum knows that they will be connected with peers at their level, capable of unlocking concrete levers for their project.
What mechanisms do you ensure to foster the economic sustainability of projects?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ Our specialty is transforming an idea into a viable and profitable model. We know that one-off grants are never enough. That is why we always work on models integrating multiple revenue streams: public-private partnerships, franchising, royalties, derived products, or even access to impact financial markets. A project must generate its own resources, not on the periphery of its mission, but at the very heart of its activity. That is what guarantees that it can last, grow, and continue to transform local and international realities.
How do you integrate the question of profit without distorting the mission?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We insist on the fact that the more a project addresses root causes, the more it remains faithful to its mission. The work on the core business, carried out with the teams themselves, ensures that every economic decision is aligned with the mission. Profit is not an end, but a powerful tool to multiply impact. If we want the world to change, impact projects must be able to generate a strong return on investment, because that is what attracts massive financing. Projects that manage to combine vision, mission, and profit become the catalysts of real transformation.
What blended finance tools do you concretely propose?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We work with a complete palette: traditional grants, strategic donations, concessional loans, collaborative loans, equity investments, guarantees, impact bonds, public-private partnerships, seed philanthropy, patient capital, performance-based financing, risk-sharing mechanisms, hybrid funds, venture philanthropy, specialized family offices. Each of these different modalities can be used alone or combined in innovative architectures. The Forum is the place where these options are tested and adapted to the concrete needs of projects, with the support of investors and philanthropists present on site, since they are directly interested in reaching their own objectives.
What are the main mistakes to avoid in the scaling phase?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ The most frequent is wanting to grow too fast without consolidating foundations. But there are others: neglecting quality, losing authenticity, underestimating the time required to build an internal culture, lacking strategic alignment, spreading too thinly across markets, poor governance, ignoring the necessity of local adaptation, or neglecting field feedback. We often identify more than ten, and the Geneva Forum is precisely the space where these mistakes are analyzed collectively, so that everyone learns from others’ failures and avoids reproducing the same pitfalls.
How does the Forum help articulate local impact and international dimension?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We show, by example, how local innovation can project globally. We can point to many concrete illustrations:
- an agroforestry project in Benin or Togo that becomes a reforestation model for West Africa;
- a citizen initiative for biodiversity monitoring in the Mediterranean that inspires global citizen science programs;
- a Swiss water technology innovation applied in Latin America;
- a micro-health insurance project in India that feeds into discussions on universal health coverage;
- education programs based on project-based learning that resonate in European educational reforms;
- a climate resilience methodology developed in Bangladesh integrated into UN strategies;
- a blended finance mechanism tested in Africa replicated by European family offices;
- local governance models implemented in Colombia taken up by international agencies;
- an initiative on responsible AI that informs global standards;
- citizen conflict mediation projects that enrich classical diplomacy;
- and small-scale circular economy experiences that become industry standards.
It is this local-international bridge that makes the Forum uniquely powerful.
What success metrics do you recommend?
’’Thomas Egli:’’ We use among others as a reference the five families of criteria of the AGILE tool(https://geneva-for-future.foundation/White-Book-AGILE.html)]: strategic alignment, governance, intention, leadership, efficiency. To this we add specific indicators defined with the teams themselves, directly linked to the targeted audiences and impacts: number of beneficiaries, revenues generated, jobs created, emission reductions, systemic transformation… These KPIs are co-constructed during the Geneva Forum so that each project leaves with a clear grid, adapted to its objectives and recognized by its financial partners.
Through its methodical approach and its international networks, the Geneva Forum demonstrates that scaling impact projects is not a utopia but a reality, provided that it relies on solid business models, strategic partnerships, and innovative financial tools. For high-level decision-makers, this is the place where every year a local success can be transformed into a global reference, capable of attracting massive financing and generating sustainable prosperity while addressing the major challenges of our time.