Innovation—the creation of new ideas, products, and services—has become increasingly important as a source of energy and funding in the social sector. Traditional nonprofit business models are being questioned, the rate of global change seems faster than organizations’ ability to keep pace, and there is a growing sense that the old ways of solving problems no longer work. Funders and grantees alike are incorporating innovation into their work—as we see in the rise of social innovation departments in major global NGOs and United Nations agencies like UNICEF—and they are building the capacity of their teams to get better at innovating.

But when it comes to established sectors like health, education, or business incubation, how might anyone provide something truly new? Can you set out to change the way a sector works?

We believe organizations across a range of different sectors—not just hubs—can benefit from this analysis.

  1. Focus on value, not services. Most organizations are internally driven, focusing on the services they provide rather than on the needs of their beneficiaries. With regard to hubs, this may be a reason why few successful businesses have spun out of them. In addition, this internal focus results in cost structures that are not optimized and investments that result in little value for the hubs’ beneficiaries.
  2. Navigate a fragmented industry. In most sectors, there is a lack of coordination and collaboration between players. Hubs are no exception, and improving this could result in a systematic progression from market research and ideation, to product design and testing, to seed capital, to scaling up.
  3. Strategic partnerships around a mutual target audience. Many organizations have access to audiences that a larger stakeholder would also benefit from. For instance, university-based hubs have access to an important market segment: youth. These hubs could benefit from business agreements with companies whose products target youth.
  4. Add value to intrapreneurs. The “intrapreneurship” movement—where people drive change from within a large organization—is actively looking for ways to learn from entrepreneurs. Hubs could create greater value by extending their services to “intrapreneurs” who seek access to new ideas, markets, and networks. This is already happening in many countries, though not to our knowledge yet in Kenya.

Read the source article about evaluating organizational services by Nasreen Dhanji and Roshan Paul at Stanford Social Innovation Review.