From ‘No’ to ‘How Do We Scale This?’—The Shift That Made All the Difference

After 20 years of boots-on-the-ground work and six years of pitches, we finally got a “yes” to a solution that had been dismissed too many times to count.

For two decades, we’ve tried to partner with others on an initiative to address one of the most complex problems in systems innovation.

Most of the time, the reaction was the same: polite nod, maybe a few sharp questions, then silence. The solution proposed was never quite understood, never quite de‑risked, never quite credible enough.

This time was different.

In hindsight, I’m not sure the shift was in the solution itself. Instead, it may have been more about the approach.

Typically, we spent most of our time explaining the how and the what. During this conversation, roughly 90% of the time was spent conveying that we fully understood the problem because we had lived it and came away with meaningful practice‑based learnings.

We didn’t just talk about outcomes; we named the messy, iterative lessons that only come from actually implementing change across diverse community contexts (e.g., rural, small town, urban), from negotiating with fragmented stakeholders, and from watching what fails before we found out what works.

The room shifted.

The question changed from “Does this work?” to “How do we fund and scale this?”

So what did this teach us about the systems innovation space? It might just be that the credibility of those doing the pitch matters.

Research on source credibility (expertise + trustworthiness) demonstrates that, for high‑risk or wicked problems, the perceived credibility of the person pitching—in our case, grounded by 20 years of practice‑based learning across diverse community contexts—dramatically increases the potential for buy‑in.

This practice‑based evidence might be the missing currency.

Data and theory help, but the real authority comes from those who’ve implemented solutions—not from textbook answers that often collapse under real-world complications and competing interests.

Funders and policymakers need to create space for practitioners to share their learnings, not just their metrics. The “how we got here” is often more persuasive than the “what we achieved” or the explanation of “how others can do it”.

Innovation matters more than ever in today’s chaotic world. Research explains what we already know, but people breaking new ground—even without solid proof—bring valuable insights we shouldn’t overlook.

If you’ve ever had a solution ignored until you proved you’d lived the problem, what changed the conversation for you? It would be great to hear your stories in the comments.

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