Abstract
Today, instructors have easy access to teaching cases from Harvard, the University of Washington, Stanford, and other sources. Consequently, books devoted solely to case studies of nonprofit organizations are relatively rare. This book is particularly distinctive in that all 18 case studies illustrate one or more aspects of innovation in the nonprofit sector.
An introductory chapter, written by the editors, cleverly utilizes Louis Guttman’s (1959, as cited in Cnaan & Vinokur-Kaplan, 2015, p. 7) notion of a “mapping sentence” to generate a multidimensional definition of innovation that includes what is being innovated (six categories), who benefits (four categories), who is the innovator (six categories), and the magnitude of the innovation (four categories). There are multiple paths through the resulting mapping sentence that provide a rich, diverse, and rigorous definition of a social innovation. This alone is an important contribution of this book.
Ten of the case studies describe the founding and growth of a new organization. Three describe innovative collaborations involving two or more organizations, some of which transcend the sectors of nonprofits, business, and government. And five describe an innovation within an existing organization, illustrating how even deeply entrenched organizations can innovate. The concluding chapter, also written by the editors, provides a very useful summary of theoretical and practical themes illustrated by the diverse cases.
The biggest advantage of this book is the rich variety of cases covering many types and sizes of nonprofit organizations, including several in countries other than the United States. Moreover, the introductory and concluding chapters, written by the editors, do an admirable job of building a coherent intellectual framework with which to frame the diverse array of cases.
The book will be a good companion to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses specializing in social innovation or entrepreneurship. It could be especially useful in courses directed at experienced practitioners in, for example, an innovation-focused executive seminar or a mid-career master’s program. Because of its specialized focus on the processes and outcomes of innovation, the book will be less useful in introductory courses on the nonprofit sector that necessarily must cover a wide range of topics and management challenges.
Beyond teaching, this book may be useful as a research tool or catalyst for generating research questions and methods on the topic of social innovation. One could easily envision a doctoral student using this book to help frame dissertation research questions and/or to choose candidate locations for field research. The book could also be useful in certain types of doctoral seminars.
However, there are some shortcomings of this book if one intends to use it in the classroom. First, the case studies are written in a rather bland chronological style that fails to invite the reader into the case as an observer or active participant. The presentation of sequential events and outcomes does not shed light on certain nuances such as the personalities and values of the actors in the cases. Moreover, the cases do not provide a rich or vivid depiction of the organizational and social context of the events described. Too few of the cases describe in any detail barriers and how the innovators overcame them. In other words, most of the cases do not give the students and the instructor the feeling of being in the shoes of the actors and stakeholders in real time as they confront complex challenges and options. By comparison, case studies from Harvard, the University of Washington (Electronic Hallway), and Stanford do a much better job of transporting the reader into the context of the case, with all of its messiness and complexity.
Second, some of the cases are authored or coauthored by people who played a role in the design of the innovation or otherwise had a stake in the outcome. This generates some concern about objectivity or balance in the presentation. In addition, the cases often end with the problem being effectively addressed by the innovation. In other words, most of the cases are wrapped up in a tidy package. This “happy ending” approach makes it a bit more difficult (but not impossible) for the instructor to lead a classroom discussion or to design an assignment that requires students to critically examine how the actors in the case failed as well as how they succeeded.
Another related weakness is that, in many instances, the discussion questions at the end of each case are not conducive to lively classroom dialogue or self-directed learning. With many of the questions, students will quickly converge on the “correct” or most logical answer after which the student exchange will inevitably fall flat (e.g., “What were the events leading up to innovation X?”). Divergent questions, on the contrary, force students to synthesize, reflect, and debate with each other, resulting in a variety of viable answers and giving the instructor and the students the opportunity to diagnose the pros and cons of various perspectives on the case. Instructors using this book will likely need to devise their own discussion questions and learning exercises for each of the case studies.