OpenForests

: how to scale a social business hybrid to support sustainable landscape projects?

Abstract

This thesis explores what strategies social business hybrids should adopt to overcome chal-lenges in scaling their business. To answer this question, I selected the social business hybrid OpenForests, a startup that supports sustainable landscape projects, for an inductive case study and gathered information by conducting interviews and collecting external data. The results revealed that OpenForests faces three major challenges in human resources, external funding, and performance management. Based on research on social enterprises and hybrid organiza-tions, I developed the following proposed solutions: OpenForests should adopt different hiring approaches depending on the job role and its relationship to the organization's dual goals, seek an impact investor for external funding based on matching profit and impact aspirations, and adopt new commercial and impact KPIs to streamline and monitor its financial and environ-mental performance. The findings contribute to a better and deeper understanding of the chal-lenges social business hybrids face in scaling their business and propose possible solutions.

Date of Award	29 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Tommaso Ramus (Supervisor)