Question Everything
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. ViaVia Travellers Cafes expanded to 16 locations worldwide, expanding both geographically (wider) and serving more people to achieve greater social impact (deeper) (Bloom & Chatterji, 2009).
ViaVia’s mission is to ‘contribute in a sustainable way to the dreams, needs and expectations of travellers and local partners by creating meaningful and memorable travel and intercultural experiences’.
The unusual approach embraced by ViaVia Cafe utilised scaling as a learning interaction. Opportunity was given to local managers to adapt for local context in their business model, whilst holding the same mission and name as the parent organisation. The parent organisation reflected and learnt from each new café and adapted their model, which could then be used for future scaling endeavours. Unusually, ViaVia initially scaled without a proven business model. Rather, each expansion was treated as an experiment, adapting and evolving as the context required. The parent organisation learnt many valuable lessons through this approach, such as the importance of having secure tenure over locations.
ViaVia Travellers Café developed a scaling strategy of ‘business model experimentation’ and ‘organisational learning’, simultaneously scaling and developing the business model.
I had the opportunity to visit one of the first ViaVia Travellers Cafés in Lueven many years ago (back when travelling was a thing!), and remember being really struck by the friendliness and inclusiveness of the café. Their hands-off approach has certainly worked well.
As I circled back on my thinking, I came back to research I had read recently on the three dominant organizational modes: branching, affiliation, and dissemination (Dees et al., 2004). The level of control the parent organisation has depends on the organisational mode they chose for scaling. ViaVia Cafés seem to operate an affiliation model, where certain standardised processes and practices are put in place. Each ViaVia entity must operate a café or restaurant, but after that, each local entity can take on their own local flavour.
Is the model that ViaVia have used replicable elsewhere?
Check out ViaVia Travellers Café: https://viavia.world/en/home
Bloom, P. N., & Chatterji, A. K. (2009). Scaling social entrepreneurial impact. California Management Review, 51(3), 114–134. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166496
Dees, J. G., Anderson, B. B., & Wei-Skillern, J. (2004). Scaling Social Impact: Strategies for spreading social innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 1(4). https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113565
Dobson, K., Boone, S., Andries, P., & Daou, A. (2018). Successfully creating and scaling a sustainable social enterprise model under uncertainty: The case of ViaVia Travellers Cafés. Journal of Cleaner Production, 172, 4555–4564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.09.010
