Scaling - when organisations magnify impact beyond their usual capacity - is key for effective social innovation, she says.
New and stubbornly persistent social challenges — such as the many women or marginalised people denied equal and fair access and treatment in the labour market — provide opportunities for social innovation. Broadly, this is the process of creating new ideas and developing novel approaches to tackle social problems, many of which are generated outside the private or public sector. In an article in Nature Human Behaviour, Professor for Organization, Strategy and Leadership Johanna Mair outlines how social innovation is making some local and global labour markets more inclusive. But she also shows that innovation alone is not enough to create impact. For this, "scaling" is required. Effective scaling allows organisations to magnify their impact by thinking beyond what they can achieve alone and rethinking how to work with other sectors.
More about the author
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Johanna Mair, Professor of Organization, Strategy and Leadership