Summer School 2024

20th Annual Social Enterprise Conference

Highlights from Social Enterprise World Forum

How social ventures grow: Understanding the role of philanthropic grants in scaling social entrepreneurship

What do social enterprises need from the ecosystem

Some considerations of scaling

Is Impact investment the solution for Irelands social enterprises?

As I start year 2 of my PhD, I took some time to reflect on some of my key learnings and insights into the scaling of Social Enterprise. I have read so much this past year and yet there is still so much I don’t know. I’ve been (kindly) told that’s the point of a PhD!

Three articles I have read in the past 10 days have really struck a chord with me and I can’t get them out of my mind. They really highlight just how complex social problems are and the innovative solutions we need to tackle them. The good news is, we are tackling them.

In a nutshell: there is growing evidence that social enterprises that curate an effective network are more successful at scaling. To know your network, you first need to understand the ecosystem you are operating in and who are the key stakeholders.

Yesterday I spent some time reading a report (Social Innovation: What it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated) from Nesta, which states “Pioneers who create markets through radical innovation are almost never the companies that go on to scale up and dominate them”

This day last year, I did an interview in TU Dublin for a PhD in the Scaling of Social Enterprise.

It didn’t feel very confident afterwards. Although I had done extensive research into what a PhD is and what it really meant, I wasn’t sure how to pitch myself as a future academic. I had read many blogs and articles about how to prepare for a PhD interview and had done all the preparation but that all went out the window the minute I logged on to the interview. Nerves arrived and being an already nervous public speaker I stumbled my way through the interview.

A question I have been asked quite a lot since September is, “Why are you doing a PhD?” When I stumbled on the world of social enterprise, it was like a lightbulb went on. I instantly knew this was the area I wanted to be in. I was (and still am) really excited by the potential of using business principles to solve social issues.

I spent the best part of a year doing a deep dive into the value and impact of curiosity as part of my work with ReCreate. What a fortuitous induction into how best to conduct research! Being curious is probably the number one requirement.

In my previous blog, I wrote about scaling being planned and structured, but I am questioning that. Life of a PhD student, eh? Question everything, ad nauseum! I recently read a really interesting empirical case study about ViaVia Travellers Café, a global social enterprise that scaled using an immature business model.