Organisation and scale
There are currently pressures to promote mergers and takeovers within the grant economy. However, we suggest that in a distributed economy a different conception of scale is needed, one that focuses on economies of information and communication and structures that can deliver that. Organisations within the social economy have less compulsion to organisational growth and more towards collaborative networking as a means of sharing innovation.
Organisational growth
Organisational growth is the simplest way to grow an innovation. However it is surprisingly rare – innovations more often grow through other means. Small social enterprises...
Read moreGrowth through collaboration
Collaborations are often used to develop and identify new solutions to problems through increased effectiveness, expertise, knowledge transfer and learning. Collaboration can help institutions work better...
Read moreSmall units/ large systems
Distributed organisations, namely those with many small nodes at the periphery, are well placed to diffuse innovations economically while retaining the advantages of small and medium...
Read moreThe consortium model
In Italy, small and medium firms have developed consortia to provide collective services where scale is important. Many of these consortia are for marketing, with groups...
Read moreFederations
Federations have often been the most successful way of spreading new ideas in the social field. These depend on finding enthusiasts in many areas and then...
Read moreLicensing
Licensing involves turning an innovation into intellectual property (IP) that can be protected and then licensed for use by others. Experience of licensing in the social...
Read more
Mergers and acquisitions
One way that organizations grow is through takeover of other organizations. Growing through takeover is not just about increasing size, but the acquisition of new technologies...
Read more
