Abstract
In Innovation and Scaling for Impact, Seelos and Mair critically examine the nonprofit sector’s current obsession with innovation as a means of creating positive social impact. Drawing on in-depth case studies of social enterprises, the authors argue that innovation on its own does not directly create impact. At best, it opens up the potential for future impact, and at worst it leads to unintended consequences that undermine impact creation. Scaling, they contend, is how organizations create positive social impact. The book is pitched to a practitioner audience, with Seelos and Mair sending social enterprise leaders and funders a challenging yet compelling message about the need to stop fetishizing innovation. Yet it is much more than just a critique; the book’s conceptual frameworks provide a valuable set of practical tools for leaders to assess and improve their organization’s ability to create impact. Faculty teaching undergraduate and masters-level courses on social entrepreneurship and innovation are also likely to find the book valuable for both its case studies and conceptual frameworks, as are academic researchers, though these are clearly secondary audiences.
The book is organized into three parts. Part 1 (chapters 1–2) explains concepts and frameworks that form the basis of the book’s main argument. Seelos and Mair introduce the concept of an “impact creation logic,” an adaption of Peter Drucker’s concept of “the theory of the business” that involves three dimensions—mission and strategy, resources and capabilities, and problem spaces (the needs and issues the organization seeks to address). Organizations are in a position to create positive social impact, Seelos and Mair argue, when these three dimensions are aligned. They use the term scaling to refer to known, routine activities within the three dimensions, whereas innovation entails novel activities outside an organization’s impact creation logic, meaning there is uncertainty along one or more of the three dimensions.
Part 2 (chapters 3–6) illustrates and builds on these concepts through in-depth case studies of four social enterprises operating in India and Bangladesh: Gram Vikas, Aravind, BRAC, and Waste Concern. This section is masterfully written, with engaging narratives, rich examples, and clear connections drawn between the case studies and the frameworks introduced in part 1. Each chapter illustrates a particular role that innovation can play in an organization’s approach to generating impact. For example, Gram Vikas, founded in 1979 to promote more inclusive and equitable social systems in rural India, innovated for many years, operating in a “red zone” of high uncertainty as its leaders sought to address complex relational issues without sufficient trust or understanding of cultural and political dynamics in local communities. During this time, Seelos and Mair argue, the organization created little impact, but leaders learned valuable lessons from failed initiatives that ultimately contributed to the development of its signature MANTRA program. By providing clean water and sanitation for all members of a village through a highly participatory process that engages individuals across gender and caste lines, MANTRA catalyzes deeper changes in social relations and existing patterns of inequality. Gram Vikas now focuses on scaling this program, operating firmly in a “green zone” in which resources are devoted to scaling rather than innovation. Yet this success was only possible, Seelos and Mair emphasize, due to extensive learning from failed innovations.
At Aravind, in contrast, whose mission is to “eliminate needless blindness” by providing eye care to patients across India, leaders focused primarily on scaling from the start, with innovation activities targeted narrowly on improving existing work processes. BRAC engages in a more balanced combination of innovation and scaling activities to address problems of poverty, illiteracy, disease, and social injustice. Finally, leaders at Waste Concern use innovation to experiment with and evaluate various recycling and waste reduction initiatives and then create impact by diffusing effective initiatives across Bangladesh and internationally through partnerships with the state, businesses, and other NGOs.
In part 3 (chapters 7–8), Seelos and Mair return to conceptual argumentation, drawing on the case studies to extend and deepen the frameworks introduced in part 1. Again their arguments are much more sophisticated than a simple admonishment not to fetishize innovation, although that is certainly a key part of the message. They urge practitioners to see innovation and scaling as processes that work together to create positive social impact. Innovation indirectly contributes to impact by providing opportunities for learning, while scaling enables more productive innovation, as new ideas can be tested within existing programs and communities with which the organization has built up trust. The key takeaways for social enterprise leaders and funders are clearly articulated: don’t focus on only innovation or only scaling; instead, determine an appropriate mix of the two based on an organization’s particular impact creation logic, and assess innovation in terms of its potential for learning, not its potential for direct impact.
There is also a valuable discussion in chapter 8 about differences between technical problems, which involve economic and cognitive barriers, and relational problems, which center on normative and political barriers that are much more complex to address yet often are key to deep and transformative social change. This distinction matters, Seelos and Mair explain, because addressing relational problems requires engaging “much more deeply, much more directly, and over much longer time with people and communities” (p. 211), as illustrated by the Gram Vikas and BRAC cases. As a result, they argue, it is critical to take account of the type of problem space when evaluating performance.
Because the book is targeted at practitioners, Seelos and Mair do not fully explore the research implications of their arguments. This is an understandable choice but a missed opportunity, as the frameworks presented raise a number of interesting and important issues that could be probed in more depth. For example, what is driving the nonprofit sector’s current focus on innovation at the expense of scaling, and how might it be overcome? How and why do some organizations productively learn from innovation while others do not? Looking beyond social enterprise and social impact, how might Seelos and Mair’s arguments apply to other kinds of organizations seeking to create other kinds of impact? To what extent do for-profit businesses also benefit from focusing less on innovation and more on scaling? And what distinguishes a social enterprise from other kinds of organizations in the first place? The book sidesteps these issues in favor of focusing on organizations that clearly have a social mission as their primary raison d’être. Yet its arguments about innovation and scaling may have much broader relevance. Moreover, research beyond the specific context of social enterprise, including work on uncertainty and organizational learning, likely has much to offer scholars interested in this particular phenomenon.
These questions and points of connection may be legitimately beyond the scope of the book, and the fact that they remain unanswered does not diminish the significant contributions Seelos and Mair make. My bigger concern is whether the book’s important message will reach its intended audience. Parts 1 and 3 in particular are chock-full of concepts, frameworks, and analytical arguments that are not easily skimmed. Given the quality, importance, and timeliness of the ideas, I hope this approach enhances rather than diminishes the book’s appeal to practitioners as well as academics interested in understanding how organizations create positive social impact. Both groups would benefit greatly from its wisdom.