Understanding social change through catalytic innovation: Empirical findings in Mexican social entrepreneurship

Abstract

Abstract Christensen, Baumann, Ruggles, and Sadtler (2006) proposed that organizations addressing social problems may use catalytic innovation as a strategy to create social change. These innovations aim to create scalable, sustainable, and systems‐changing solutions. This empirical study examines: (a) whether catalytic innovation applies to Mexican social entrepreneurship; (b) whether those who adopt Christensen et al.’s (2006) strategy generate more social impact; and (c) whether they demonstrate economic success. We performed a survey of 219 Mexican social entrepreneurs and found that catalytic innovation does occur within social entrepreneurship, and that those social entrepreneurs who use catalytic innovations not only maximize their social impact but also maximize their profits, and that they do so with diminishing returns to scale. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.