Successfully creating and scaling a sustainable social enterprise model under uncertainty: The case of ViaVia Travellers Cafes

摘要

While the literature on social scaling adopts a linear perspective in which a social enterprise first tests and validates its business model and then scales it up to other settings, this study argues that in uncertain and volatile environments, a more iterative approach may be appropriate. We develop an in-depth case study of ViaVia Travellers Cafes, a social enterprise that has successfully scaled its operations to 16 locations covering four continents. Through document analyses and twelve interviews with internal and external stakeholders, we are able to map and analyze the development process of the ViaVia Travellers Cafes, with information covering a period of more than 25 years. We find that under uncertainty, the social business model does not need to be proven before scaling it up. In fact, ViaVia Travellers had not yet developed a replicable model when scaling activities were undertaken. It regarded each new expansion as an experiment, and developed the business model's economic and social elements by learning from the portfolio of its previous experiments. Overcoming uncertainty hence involved simultaneously developing and scaling the business model. Our study introduces insights from the literature on business model development under uncertainty to the research on sustainable business models and social scaling, while contributing relevant insights for social entrepreneurs trying to scale. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.