The capacity of single innovations to contribute to sustainable food system transformation is weak if they are not replicated, imitated, networked, amplified, supported, and/or disseminated .
It is useful to consider different scale considerations for an innovation (Moore et al., 2015):
- “Scaling out” is about impacting greater numbers. Strategies may include the replication or the spreading of projects and programs geographically and/or in greater numbers, or the dissemination of principles, knowledge, experiences, with the adaptation to new territorial contexts.
- “Scaling up” is about impacting laws and policy. This can include changes to legal terms, policy governance, commodity chain structuring, etc.
- “Scaling deep” is about impacting cultural roots. That means spreading big cultural ideas and using stories to shift norms and beliefs, or investing in transformative learning and communities of practice.

Source : https://www.mcconnellfoundation.ca/assets/PDFs/ScalingOut_Nov27A_AV_BrandedBleed.pdf
By engaging with multiple actors and sharing results, Urbal can enable various kinds of scale shifts, by strengthening the capacity of practitioners to disseminate their innovations and contribute to the transition towards more sustainable food systems.
Urbal also helps to document scale related change in support of additional transitions and/or transformation.