The oilfield scale is undoubtedly one of the most important flow assurance issues in the recovery of oil and gas. The formation of sparingly soluble salts of BaSO4 and CaCO3 when incompatible brines are mixed causes serious operational issues and imposes a large economic burden on operators. Scale management is principally by the deployment of oilfield chemicals, scale inhibitors, which work efficiently at sub-stoichiometric concentrations. Much of the research work in scale inhibitors has been directed toward (a) the deployment of chemicals through squeeze treatments and the adsorption and desorption (release) kinetics from the formation and (b) the determination of the minimum inhibitor concentration (MIC) to prevent bulk precipitation from bulk jar tests. Work carried out in the University of Leeds for the last 9 years has focused on understanding the deposition of scale on solid surfaces, and this paper summarizes some of the current thinking with respect to the importance of surfaces in scale management. The quantification of scale at the surface, the visualization of scale as it forms on the surface, and the notion of a different inhibition criterion (MIC) for surface and bulk scaling are all discussed in this paper. This paper is focused on the calcium carbonate system, but much of the discussion is also relevant to BaSO4 and other common inorganic scales (e.g., CaSO4).