Tag Archives | Scaling

Success story: How iCow scaled and scaled

By Loren Treisman

Three years ago the Indigo Trust came in as sole funder of Kenyan farming SMS service, iCow. The trust ended up awarding £87 782 in total, but the company now has 150 000 users and a signed deal with the country’s largest mobile operator Safaricom. Founder of iCow, Su Kahumbu, tells us more… “We provide […]

Inside | Loren Treisman

Loren

She has a PhD from Cambridge and expertise in international development, governance, health and the use of technology to spur social change. She’s the Executive of Indigo Trust, a grant-making foundation that supports tech-driven projects in Africa, particularly those involving innovation, transparency and citizen empowerment. Loren regularly presents at conferences and writes for the international press, including The Guardian, CNN and the BBC. She was named one of the 20 Powerful Women to Watch in 2014 in The Huffington Post. She also likes to go camping just about every weekend.

Not a magic pill, but a process

By Marcus Coetzee

Making a social innovation work is not simple. But when it does, it might be tempting to believe you can just duplicate the process again and again and it will keep working. But it’s not that simple. Let’s look at the reality of scaling, and some crucial questions you need to ask before trying. […]

Inside | Marcus Coetzee

Marcus

Marcus Coetzee is a management consultant who’s actively promoted social enterprise for more than 14 years. He’s worked with many social enterprises and nonprofit organisations, with a particular interest in helping leaders think and act decisively. Now he heads up the African Social Entrepreneurs Network (ASEN) and is working with the Bertha Centre to develop social innovation strategies for the South African government. When not doing all of the above, Marcus can probably be found in a nature reserve or reading “way too many” science fiction and fantasy novels. www.marcuscoetzee.co.za

Six questions to ask before scaling

By Marcus Coetzee

It would be great if successful social innovations really could be popped like magic pills or copied and pasted around a country or community. But they can’t. The implementation and scaling of a Social Innovation (SI) needs as much attention as its piloting and design. Here are some important questions about scaling to consider, particularly […]

Inside | Marcus Coetzee

Marcus

The world’s first Social Franchising Accelerator

By Inside | Out

The capabilities needed to design a social innovation are different from those required to scale it. That’s why the “magic pill” approach doesn’t work and many social innovators need specialised scaling support. That’s one of the reasons for the recent launch of the world’s first Social Franchising Accelerator by the Bertha Centre, in partnership with the […]

Questions of Scale

By Warren Nilsson

[wooslider slider_type=”attachments”] So you’ve got a socially innovative project or product off the ground. But not that far off the ground – it’s pretty much working at grassroots level. This is when most innovators want to start rolling it out and scaling it up to something bigger and (hopefully) more beneficial. But Warren Nilsson has […]

Inside | Warren Nilsson

Warren_Nilson

Warren Nilsson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and co-founder of the international social change project Organization Unbound. He also cycles to work every day – and everywhere else too.