Snippet: Allison Fine on Networking Social Change

What a fascinating conference.  You can follow the simulcasts here.  So many ideas floating around, colliding and inspiring each other in a big beautiful web.  Perhaps the easiest thing to do is give a brief summary via a form I'll call snippets.  And here's the first.

From: Allison Fine, author, consultant to the non-profit and social change world, and evangelist of social media.  

Speaking In: The Power Plenary

Background/Ideas Questioned: Going to scale (growing your organization so that its model is replicated across geography and demographic space) is considered a major goal of social enterprises.  It's often used in funding criteria, and it's seen as evidence of an organization's sustainability.  Fine's comments ran against this conclusion. 

Her Argument:  Don't seek largeness for its own sake.  Complex social problems can only be solved through social networks, not large organizations.  Simplify and focus your organization on what you do best, and network the rest through other like-minded organizations.  

So What?: Fine, of course, is not the only one saying this.  I recall reading a really fascinating Harvard Business Review piece from social enterprise scholar Jane Wei-Skillern about precisely this: the networked non-profit.  But this model of networked problem solving is, in fact, a major tidal change from a traditional non-profit management style focused on building huge, centralized, top-down organizations.  

What do you think?  Is this just obvious, or are there problems with this approach?