Dumb scale-up is one-off, bespoke, and slow. It correlates with delays, cost overruns, and benefit shortfalls. Any business, government, or NGO that depends on dumb scale-up is unlikely to be successful. Smart scale-up is the answer. — Nuclear power is an obvious example of dumb scale-up, almost embarrassingly so. This is because both the technology and the economics of nuclear are so evidently flawed that the deficiencies are impossible to overlook.

Electrification works. Digitalization, not so much. Digitalization must learn from electrification to succeed. — Electrification is one of two dominant megatrends in the world today. Digitalization is the other. It is interesting to compare the two. Both are delivered through tens of thousands of projects, big and small, year in and year out, in every geography of the world. …

Behavioral science convincingly shows we’re our own biggest risk. The causal chain that drives downside and underperformance in decisions starts with human bias. The solution is de-biasing. — Scientific revolutions rarely happen without friction. So, too, for the behavioral revolution in social science and economics. It has been met with skepticism, including in the field of project management, which we focus on here, because today the vast majority of business and government is delivered as projects.*

In the face of authoritarianism, the relationship between power and rationality needs a rethink, or modernity and democracy will be even more threatened than they already are. This essay is an attempt at such a rethink. — A person who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction. - Machiavelli Francis Bacon’s famous tenet that “knowledge is power” encapsulates one of the most fundamental ideas of modernity and of the Enlightenment tradition: the more rational knowledge, the better. Empirical study…

Wider benefits are invoked to justify projects that are non-viable in terms of direct benefits and costs. But what is the evidence of wider benefits? — Wider benefits are often invoked in attempts to justify projects that may not be viable in terms of direct benefits and costs.* It would be nice — and good practice — if proponents of the wider-benefits argument would provide empirical evidence that wider benefits are in fact significant and may…

Wind and solar farms are built like LEGOs, click, click, click. That’s why the climate crisis may — just — be overcome. — When the British prime minister inaugurated the London Array in July 2013, it was the largest offshore wind farm in the world, costing USD 3.0 billion in 2012 prices.* …

Two factors play a critical role in determining whether projects will meet with success or failure: replicable modularity in design and speed in iteration — With climate change forcing the pace, government and business are contemplating major changes in technology and basic infrastructures. The oil-and-coal-fired power generators of the last century are giving way to wind farms and solar arrays. Fossil-fueled cars and networks of gas stations may soon be consigned to history. …

Too many forecasters are fools or frauds. Litigation is bringing much-needed discipline to the profession. — Too many forecasters are fools or frauds. Forecasting fools should be sent back to school to learn new methods. Forecasting frauds should be fired and possibly prosecuted, depending on how serious their fraud is. Recently, for the first time in history, forecasting frauds have been prosecuted, sending shock waves through the global forecasting industry.

Choosing the right model for scale-up is key to success. Even Google gets it wrong sometimes, as with Google Fiber. Google found that digging up sidewalks is not their core competency. — Digging does not scale well, something Google had overlooked. In 2012, Google Fiber was established to provide superfast broadband Internet and TV to US cities. At first, the company tried to scale broadband the conventional way, that is, by digging cables into the ground. But digging is not one of…