Scaling Strategies for Social Entrepreneurs: A Market Approach

Social entrepreneurs often experience difficulties when attempting to scale. The reason for this is that scaling isn’t just about an entrepreneur’s willingness to grow, but also—and, perhaps, even more importantly—his or her capacity to develop a scaling strategy that reflects an understanding of the various components that must be adjusted to accomplish scaling goals. Once entrepreneurs decided to scale the impact of their enterprise, they must develop new capabilities in order to access new resources and skills.

This book will help social entrepreneurs create effective scaling strategies by providing a detailed, three-phased market approach to scaling. Cases based on social entrepreneurs who have successfully worked in low-income markets in Latin America then illustrate three main strategies for scaling impact: co-creating in low income contexts, collective impact, and replicating business models. The market approach to scaling described in this book is based on the theory of negotiating impact for resources, as introduced in this book, and a corresponding study of more than 100 entrepreneurs in the Latin American region.

By offering a conceptual three phased approach as a guide for reflecting on practical case studies, this book appeals to business academics, leaders of incubators and those working with social entrepreneurs as well as current and aspiring social entrepreneurs themselves seeking to improve their management practices in order to scale their impact.