This paper aims to discuss scalability in social business settings. We intend to
highlight dilemmas and challenges that social entrepreneurs face when scaling
up their start-ups. As proposed in the GEM Social Entrepreneurship Activity
Report (2015- 2016), social entrepreneurship can be defined as any kind of
activity, organization or initiative that has a particularly social, environmental or
communitarian objective. This may include providing services or training to
socially deprived or disabled persons, activities aimed at reducing pollution or
food waste, organizing self-help groups for community action, etc. Scalability is
an important feature in social impact ventures. It allows startups to achieve their
social mission providing more efficient solutions for low-income populations.
Furthermore, it also promotes scale economies that could facilitate the guarantee
of attractive returns for investors and entrepreneurs. A social business can be
scaled up by expanding the business itself or through the replication of its
technological solution by others entrepreneurs in other regions. However, scaling
up often presents personal dilemmas for the founding social entrepreneurs in
addition to requiring improvement of technical and managerial capabilities. Our
study addresses these issues and proposes an avenue of inquiry balancing the
scalability challenge with that of the social entrepreneurs´ motivations and
capabilities. To investigate these issues, we adopted a case study strategy.
Based on in- depth interviews, we studied an award winning Brazilian startup,
known as “Green Solution”. Green Solution was created to solve the grain storage
problem on small farms. The entrepreneur, whose parents are small farmers, has
been aware of the need for efficient and cheap solutions for grain storage since
his early childhood. Additionally, as a business administration student at a Jesuit
University (UNISINOS - a Brazilian university located in Rio Grande do Sul,
southern Brazil), he was stimulated by studies on sustainability. As soon as he
met an opportunity to create a new venture, Green Solution’s founder proposed
a prototype of a silo adapted to small farms, totally built with recycled materials,
using PET bottles as the main material input. The Green Solution’s silo solution
combines affordability for small farmers and sustainability, and its mission was
framed connecting the improvement of agricultural productivity on small farms
with social, financial, and environmental sustainability. In 2014, this project won
an entrepreneurship competition promoted at the UNISINOS’s incubator. Since
the business’ inception, the entrepreneur has been facing important decisions
regarding venture development, mainly related with how to scale up while
assuring mission continuation and sustainability. This case study sheds some
light on this issue and contributes to ongoing studies about social enterprise
scaling and impact challenges.