Most social entrepreneurs start their work on a local level; the goal is to tackle a certain social problem. When successful, they next work to “scale out” the initiative, disseminating it to other individuals, organizations or communities. However, over time the same social entrepreneurs discover that to reach their goal they need to change the system that created the problem in a first place. The authors define the latter as an effort to “scale up” social innovation. This shift from a “scaling out” strategy to “scaling up” is not simple. In this research the authors investigate how successful social entrepreneurs face the challenge of scaling up their social innovation. They focus on the skills and approaches that are necessary for moving from scaling out trajectory to the scaling up one and argue that the ability to see the larger context, recognize and seize the opportunities is central for successful scaling up efforts. They introduce the notion of system entrepreneurship and explain that the major difference between successful social entrepreneurs and system entrepreneurs is the ability to manage the context and orchestrate an interplay between the openings and actions that can move social innovation forward. Their argument is illustrated by drawing on the cases of selected non-for-profit organizations that became engaged in scaling up efforts in the past few years. The article presents four case studies out of which one showcases a successful story of scaling up social innovation to a policy level, whereas the rest of cases explore why social entrepreneurs were not able to move their social innovation to a higher scale. While bringing examples of both successful and not-yet-successful cases of scaling-up, they hope to contribute towards better understanding of why certain social entrepreneurs and non-for profits are able to alter the larger system, while other fail to do so. [Adapted from authors’ abstract].
Westley, Frances and Antadze, Nino (2013) When scaling out is not enough : strategies for system change (Paper presented at the international conference Social Frontiers : The next edge of social innovation research, at GCU's London Campus on 14th and 15th November 2013).
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