494. Why Do Most Ideas Fail to Scale?

Freakonomics Radio

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Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 32K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

In a new book called "The Voltage Effect," the economist John List — who has already revolutionized how his profession does research — is trying to start a scaling revolution. In this installment of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, List teaches us how to avoid false positives, how to know whether a given success is due to the chef or the ingredients, and how to practice “optimal quitting.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you are an American of a certain age, you may remember when Kmart, the Discount Department
0:08.4	Store Chain, was everywhere.
0:10.6	Kmart is more than any store you have known before.
0:17.8	Kmart means you get quality.
0:22.6	At one point, Kmart had more than 2,300 locations in the US.
0:26.9	It was a famous brand with one very famous in-store promotion.
0:31.8	Sure, sure.
0:32.8	The Blue Light Special.
0:33.8	Yeah, the old Blue Light Special just about cost me my marriage.
0:37.0	John List is an economist at the University of Chicago.
0:40.4	His Blue Light Special Story goes back to when he was a graduate student at the University
0:44.4	of Wyoming.
0:45.4	I'm sitting in our house and it's like mid-October and 10 degrees in snowing.
0:52.6	You can imagine a cattle town.
0:57.4	My wife is in a long rant about how much she hates Laramie Wyoming.
1:03.9	Then she looks out our front window.
1:06.5	Down the street, there's a Kmart, which is having a Blue Light Special and says, I
1:11.8	can't even get away from the bleeping Blue Light Special at Kmart.
1:22.6	That's how big a deal the Blue Light Special was.
1:25.3	It had been invented by an assistant store manager at a Kmart in Indiana.
1:30.3	The Blue Light Special is what Sam Walton, the famous entrepreneur who started Walmart,
1:35.4	said is like the greatest innovation in the world.
	...

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