Collaboration for Social Innovation: Scaling for Impact

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Project duration: 10/2020 - 09/2023

Project volume: BUW share: €360,000

Project partners

Prof. Dr Christine Volkmann: Jackstadt Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research & UNESCO Chair of Entrepreneurship and Intercultural Management

University of Groningen (Netherlands)

Queen's of University (Canada)

Oxfam (United Kingdom)

Project objective

As part of the Trans-Atlantic Platform's (T-AP) "Social Innovation" call for proposals, the Jackstadt Centre, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair for Entrepreneurship and Intercultural Management, has joined forces with international project partners to research the scaling of social innovations. T-AP is an association of transatlantic social scientists and humanities scholars who, in collaboration with national funding organisations, call for research into social problems.

At the end of 2019, the BUW received funding totalling around €360,000 from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the research project on social innovations. This sum will now be used over a period of three years to investigate the possibilities, limits and tensions of the scalability of social innovations. The project was officially launched in October 2020.

The project is divided into three (thematic) focal points: the type of social innovation and its components as well as framework conditions that allow scaling; intra-organisational factors that can hinder or enable scaling; and inter-organisational factors that influence scaling success. To this end, the project partners will initially utilise existing data and collect qualitative data on which to build in subsequent phases. The focus here is on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, in particular the use of affordable and clean energy.

In 2020, following a kick-off event in October, literature reviews were conducted on the three research areas mentioned. These provided an up-to-date overview of existing research and revealed numerous research gaps that could be addressed by the researchers. Based on this, specific research projects were developed and discussed in the project team. In 2021, plans for data collection and analysis will be finalised before the first data collection takes place. Initial results are expected in the second half of 2021. Associated conference participations are planned for both 2021 and 2022, where research ideas and results can be presented and discussed.