Curating 1000 flowers as they bloom: Leveraging pluralistic initiatives to diffuse social innovations

Abstract

Research Summary: Social and environmental challenges in our society offer opportunities for innovation. Having a strong mission can enhance both opportunity recognition and strategic alignment; however, aligning strategy and mission can be challenging when an organization pursues its social mission in pluralistic ways. How can mission-driven organizations manage pluralistic local initiatives while cohering to their missions? Using an inductive field study, I trace how Slow Money, an organization fostering sustainable local food systems by connecting food entrepreneurs with local investors, translated its core mission into different mission-oriented local initiatives. I find that mission-oriented local initiatives were recombined to create novel strategies curated and diffused by the central leadership, and I show how, rather than derail an organization's mission, pluralistic local initiatives can foster strategies for social innovation. Managerial Summary: Organizations addressing social and environmental challenges often are mission driven. Though a mission can help guide strategy decisions, it also can lead to strategy confusion, especially when an organization consists of many local groups with different interpretations of the mission. I use the case of Slow Money, a nonprofit supporting sustainable local food systems, to understand how an organization can transform an assortment of mission-based strategies into an asset rather than a liability. I find that by promoting an open exchange of local initiatives and strategies, Slow Money's central leadership validated strategy diversity. It also provided its local groups with the opportunity to borrow and repurpose other groups' initiatives. In this way, diverse local strategies created mission unity while also increasing organizational social innovation.