How can we leverage collective action and bring together public administrations, citizens and organized civil society to collaboratively ideate and develop solutions to complex societal challenges?
In the article “Pathways and Mechanisms for Catalyzing Social Impact through Orchestration: Insights from an Open Social Innovation Project” published in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights Johanna Mair, Thomas Gegenhuber, Laura Thäter and René Lührsen address this question and examine new forms of collective forms of entrepreneurship aimed at generating beneficial outcomes for society and making progress on solving or preventing social problems.
Open social innovation
We studied UpdateDeutschland, an open social innovation project designed and implemented by ProjectTogether, a social enterprise based in Germany. What sets ProjectTogether apart from more traditional social enterprises is that their main lever to generate social impact is orchestrating collective action across different sectors.
Although orchestration has been recognized as critical for achieving collective impact, we still know little about how orchestration works. In this study, we ask how orchestration generates social impact in an open social innovation project.
Research as documenting lived experience
Opening the social innovation process requires entrepreneurs to solicit and coordinate the participation from multiple stakeholders. UpdateDeutschland set out to tackle societal challenges in Germany involving citizen innovators, public administration, and organized civil society, endorsed by the German Chancellery. The project – live from March 2021 to August 2021 – brought together 4,400 participants to develop new solutions or improve existing ones in six problem domains (namely, climate-neutral future, education, city and rural life, health, democracy and civic engagement, and digital government).
Our research team followed UpdateDeutschland as learning partners from inception to completion. We observed the project in real-time, conducted interviews with all stakeholders, analyzed documents and online data. Overall, we conducted 109 interviews and engaged in 650 hours of real time participant observation.
Not one but several pathways to impact
We identified four impact pathways. These pathways constitute distinct social impact orchestration strategies to catalyze the impact potential of collaborative initiatives formed during the open social innovation process.
The first impact pathway centered on fostering co-creation of new initiatives around a lead user. While the lead user can be any stakeholder, in the case of UpdateDeutschland, ProjectTogether orchestrated the formation of new initiatives around a public sector actor as the lead user and involved citizens in the co-creation of solutions.
The second impact pathway focused on amplifying the impact potential of existing solutions. This pathway follows the rationale that a multitude of solution ideas exists but requires additional support to unfold impact. Hence, social impact orchestration amplifies a solution’s impact potential by enabling initiatives to further develop, improve, and roll out a more robust solution.
The third impact pathway aimed at forging problem centric alliances. Building alliances allows the initiatives to increase public awareness of a social problem and/or create public pressure to support potential solutions
The fourth impact pathway centered on strengthening local ecosystems. Here, ProjectTogether involved resourceful stakeholders such as municipalities and other local actors such as advocacy organizations for social innovation or philanthropists from the same region.
We show how social impact orchestration enabled learning and scaling differently in each pathway and thus enhanced the social impact potential of stakeholders involved in unique ways.
Orchestration is key to catalyze collective impact
Our study offers insights on how to include citizens and the public sector as active participants in the social innovation process, i.e., the process of developing and scaling solutions to societal challenges. Such participatory process might take longer but they pay off as they enhance the impact potential of all stakeholders and help stakeholders to build capacity for social innovation they can leverage in future projects.
Read the full paper here to find out more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352673422000646
Author biographies
Johanna Mair is a Professor of Organization, Strategy and Leadership at the Hertie School in Berlin and co-directs the Global Innovation for Impact Lab at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Her research addresses the nexus of societal challenges, institutions, and organizations. She received her PhD from INSEAD, France.
Thomas Gegenhuber is Professor for Managing Socio-Technical Transitions at the Johannes Kepler University Linz and visiting professor at the Leuphana University Lüneburg. His research addresses digital and sustainable transformation.
Laura Thäter is a Research Associate and Ph.D. candidate at the Sustainable Transformation Management Lab at Johannes Kepler University Linz. Her research area is organization theory, with a particular interest in new forms of organization and how those can contribute to tackle complex societal challenges.
René Lührsen is a Research Associate and Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Management and Organisation at the Leuphana University Lüneburg. His research addresses new forms of organizing at the intersection of organized civil society and the public sector, with a particular interest in social innovation and digital technology.
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