In 2005 I founded the Ramadan Festival. It started as one idea. It reached 42 cities in the Netherlands and 5 cities abroad, among them London, Lausanne and Stavanger.
Build something that belongs to everyone
A festival does not scale because you own it. It scales because other people do. Every city needs its own partners, its own programme and its own reasons to take part.
A format, not a head office
What travels from city to city is a format: clear enough to recognise, loose enough to adapt. A startup programme needs the same thing. So does a market entry.
Scale is what happens when other people can run it without you.
What it proved
In 2009 the festival won the Marketplace of Ideas of the UN Alliance of Civilizations. The lesson I took from it was simpler than the prize: if you want an idea to go far, give it away.
