When Bees meet Trees is a research report that addresses a critical gap in the third sector’s response to social challenges:  the role of large social sector organisations in helping to scale social innovation.

2012 Clore Social Fellows, Ruth Marvel and Owen ask why, when we know that social innovation and collaboration is the key to tackling social problems, do ‘bees and trees’ in the social sector rarely join forces to scale good ideas that work, and how it could happen more.

‘Bees’ are small organisations or individuals who have the new ideas, are mobile, quick and able to cross-pollinate and ‘Trees’ represent big organisations which are poor at creativity but generally good at implementation, and which have the resilience, roots and scale to make things happen. (Mulgan et al, 2006)

The report recommends that funders, policy makers and intermediary organisations that exist to promote and scale social innovation need to:

• recognise the potential of larger social sector organisations to help scale social innovation;
• develop more ways to connect social innovations and organisations that can help them scale, through social events, expos and new models of accelerators and incubators; and
• publicise and celebrate examples of these types of partnership in order to incentivise and give ‘permission’ to others to follow suit. 

Read the full report here: www.cloresocialleadership.org.uk