“Minimum Viable Consortia”?


I had not heard about this term until last week. I am a big fan of agile approaches which campion the minimum viable product (MVP) so I was intrigued.

In the world of social collective action, it has been widely accepted that “large-scale societal challenges require large-scale responses”.

Like many of my social impact colleagues, I was influenced by the 2011 seminal work of Kania and Kramer on Collective Action which suggested highly coordinated and structured efforts between organizations, including the development of a backbone organization (Stanford Social Innovation Review 2011).

Minimal Viable Consortia is a new agile paradigm for collective action proposed by the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative (SSIR, 2022).

They argue that “progress on major societal challenges can and often should begin with small, agile initiatives—minimum viable consortia (MVC)—that learn and adapt as they build the scaffolding for large-scale change.”

In the next few posts, I will examine some of their core principles and experiences.

I can’t help but think that agility applied to collective action may be the right thing in a time of dynamic change.

❓ Now You: What do you think? Minimum Viable Consortia or Collective Action Backbone organizing?

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