Research
27.01.2017

How effective social enterprises create impact

Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair draw on a decade of research for new book.

Update: Johanna Mair and Christian Seelos have been nominated for the 2017 Thinkers50 Innovation Award for this book.

In their new book Innovation and Scaling for Impact: How Effective Social Enterprises Do It, published by Stanford University Press, Hertie School professor Johanna Mair, Professor of Organisation, Strategy and Leadership, and Christian Seelos, an adjunct professor at the Hertie School and a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS), share deep insights and offer diagnostics on how organisations create impact. The book draws on a decade of research by Seelos and Mair, exploring how social sector organisations create value. There is an overlooked tension, according to the authors, between organisations’ need to innovate - or implement new ideas, and how they build on existing strengths - a process the authors call “scaling”. An organisation, and ultimately its impact, can be fundamentally defined by its ability to manage this tension.

Innovation and Scaling for Impact includes four case studies which detail effective strategies for combining innovation with scaling. This ultimately leads readers to better understand how to drive progress and which tools can help organisations to learn and become more effective in tackling social problems and societal challenges.

An event and book discussion will be held at the Hertie School in spring 2017.

A copy of the book can be ordered here.

Read an excerpt of the book here