Cliff Prior

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  Cliff commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Scale vs. Diffusion Redux

  Many thanks to Nathanial for opening up this important line of debate. The social sector is full of examples of how scale/diffusion pans out in practice, and here are a couple from my experience.

  
  

  In the UK there was a major re-invention of social housing in the late '60s and '70s. Inspired by a common understanding of the problem and solution, large numbers of entrepreneurs and communities developed very similar organisations. The energy this created developed into a movement which grew to the scale where government policy changed and funding flowed. Over time, some of these new social landlords have gone on to great scale - but their expansion relied in the early stages on the presence of many, with corresponding numbers of highly active social leaders.

  
  

  However there are other sectors which seem held back by a diffusion position, with many small organisations none of which get to sustainable scale or impact adequate to the scale of the problem. Refugee support organisations might be an example, or womens refuges.

  
  

  Perhaps a problem with the debate here is that it assumes the choice of scale or diffusion is rational and deliberate. Examples seem to suggest it is more about environment and circumstance. Refugee groups are small and fragile because of the poverty of their members and insecurity of their position, with each wave of refugees having to start afresh. 
  
  Others have commented on the lack of intellectual property protection in the social sector - either because the concepts are not capable of protection or because of cultural choice. Sharing ideas and tools seems democratic and "social" but lack of IP protection will inevitably mean that big, high cost ideas or developments will not be viable. 
  
  From UnLtd's experience in supporting social entrepreneurs, I do not think we can place a responsibility on individual entrepreneurs to go to scale or even construct methods to enable purposeful diffusion. They are too busy trying to get started and get sustainable themselves. How much can they - or we as support agents, or policy makers - construct an environment which assists the right sort of diffusion/scaling for each idea or sector? The right answer will be different for each idea and each stage of its development - how often could we get this right? 
  
  At UnLtd we deploy both games - open programmes which support an ecology of social entrepreneurs with different attitudes and abilities to scale, and themed programmes which can bring the entrepreneurs together with sector experts and policy makers for a more conscious approach. We already evaluate each programme, but it would be fascinating and useful to evaluate the different approaches.