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Scale up/scale out/scale deep

In this article by Moore, Riddell and Vocisano, it is argued that the process of scaling social innovations to achieve systemic impacts involves three different types of scaling—scaling out, scaling up, and scaling deep—and large systems change (LSC) is likely to require a combination of these types. The findings focus on the phenomenon of scaling, and the strategies by which actors can move social innovation impacts across scales. After broadening their problem frame to pursue large systems change, participants described different strategies depending on whether they attempted to scale out, up, or deep. ‘Scaling out’ relates to an organisation that attempts to affect more people and cover a larger geographic area through replication and diffusion, and ‘scaling up’, relates to an organisation that aims to affect everybody who is in need of the social innovation they offer, or aims to address the broader institutional or systemic roots of a problem. Strategies for ‘scaling deep’ are related to the notion that durable change has been achieved only when people’s hearts and minds, their values and cultural practices, and the quality of relationships they have, are transformed.

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Social innovation
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