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.



Urs Jäger is associate professor at INCAE Business School and Research Director of VIVA Idea. He focuses his research on inclusion of formal and informal actors, low-income markets and social entrepreneurship. He has more than 7 years of experience in teaching experience-based courses in low-income markets. He is the co-author, most recently, of the article Cocreating with the Base of the Pyramid published with Ted London in Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Felipe Symmes is Senior Researcher at VIVA Idea and PHD Candidate in Organizational Studies and Theory of Culture at University of St. Gallen. He has a Master degree in Studies of development at Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and a five year bachelor degree in business economics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His work focuses on social entrepreneuship, sustainability, informal markets, indigenous communities and innovation. He has led consulting processes in the private, public and civil society sectors in different Latin American countries. He is also a literature writer, publishing in 2016 his first book called 'Writings of a lost man'.
Guillermo Cardoza is a tenured professor and researcher at INCAE Business School. He is an expert in innovation, change management, and internationalization of SMEs from emerging economies. He has more than 30 years of experience in the world of teaching, research, consulting and management of academic institutions. Guillermo has advised several governments in Latin America and has worked as a consultant for various international organizations. He has taught executive training programs on issues of innovation, change management and international competitiveness for multinationals such as Pfizer, P&G, Roche-Pharma, Nestlé, Cargill, Walmart, Santander Group, 3M, Telefonica. He studied at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Business Economics as well as master's degrees in Latin American Studies, International Relations and Business Administration. He has been Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and the MIT-Sloan School of Management.