The Miccosukee Indians, a small tribe of indigenous people in South Florida, have a long-standing interest in protecting the land, waterways, and habitats of the Everglades, their ancestral home, which serves as a watershed for urban areas in Miami-Dade County and a defense against climate change. For many years, the Everglades were threatened by suburban development and oil drilling. Recently, tribal members had engaged in various actions to increase awareness and reduce harm, including a protest march, use of the arts, and restoring habitats for fish, while also lobbying public officials and joining with environmental groups. Now, Curtis Osceola, chief of staff to the newly elected tribal chairman, assessed the value of actions to date and considered wanted what kinds of coalitions the tribe should join or convene for greater impact on Everglades restoration and climate change mitigation.

Colette Phillips' marketing firm had just won the City of Boston's 2nd largest contract in history to a Black-owned company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Get Konnected!, the networking organization for people of color that she founded 15 years earlier and led to prominence, had evolved into a portfolio of 5 ventures, including executive recruiting and a VC fund, to remove systemic barriers to equity and inclusion in business and wealth creation in a long-racially-troubled region where she had also experienced discriminatory barriers. A strong commitment to partnerships, some controversial, had extended her reach, and Boston was changing, including its first elected female mayor of color. How could Phillips assess her impact as a leader, given the magnitude of the problems? What was the role of networking in increasing the numbers of successful minority and female small businesses? Was she contributing to changing the narrative and building new institutions? In addition to the 4 N's of numbers, narratives, networks, and new institutions, how else could she capitalize on the region's momentum, and determine what to do next with her platform to ensure a more equitable and inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem?

In 2014, Ifeoma Fafunwa, an award-winning playwright and director, founded iOpenEye, a commercial production company dedicated to driving social change through performance art. iOpenEye's flagship theatrical production was called "Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True," which shared narratives of Nigerian women's struggles. By 2019, "Hear Word!" had debuted internationally, playing sold-out shows at distinguished venues like the American Repertory Theater and at the renowned Edinburgh International Festival. By spring 2020, COVID hit and venues closed, offering Fafunwa new possibilities, such as streaming content and reconsideration of production scale. What steps would it take to have iOpenEye and "Hear Word!" be successful five years down the line? Fafunwa contemplated her next move knowing that whatever it was, it had to be an iOpenEye 2.0 business model.

Five years after the company's founding, Andela, a company that built and trained remote engineering teams, became arguably Africa's greatest technology unicorn. By January 2019, Andela raised $100 million in Series D funding. As Andela looked to scale in an increasingly competitive landscape, its goal was to democratize trust and become an "Amazon Web Services" (AWS) for software engineering talent. With their windfall investment and the advent of COVID, Andela had to figure out their "2.0 model" to permit scaling. How would Andela stack up in a growing landscape of global remote talent companies? Could Andela become not just Africa's, but the world's AWS for trusted software engineering talent?

By 2020, Bridge International Academies and its "school in a box" model had achieved great scale. By leveraging digital technology and public-private partnerships, they had reached one million children across Africa and India through hundreds of schools. However, the organization encountered controversy as well as unexpected challenges resulting from COVID-19.

Four diverse women entrepreneurs launched their ventures in a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that was part of a shift to a creative technology-driven economy for Miami. Although Miami was rated the #1 U.S. city for startups in 2017, the region contained structural barriers and cultural biases unfriendly to women and people of color, including lack of access to capital and relationships. The case highlights women founders' backgrounds and experiences with an ed-tech startup, a coding school and events for Black entrepreneurs; an incubator for green businesses with a Black leadership focus; and an accelerator for social impact ventures that also runs social media campaigns for problems such as climate change. The women CEOs reveal the barriers they faced, how they overcame them, and how they attempt to enrich the ecosystem for other women and people of color. This case raises the question of what must be in place for cities to take advantage of the innovation and job-creating potential of a wider population of entrepreneurs and gain the benefits of diversity, and for women founders to thrive.

In 2019, Sesame Workshop celebrated its 50th anniversary while on a winning streak of social impact, innovation, and peak media and financial results. Over the past four years, CEO Jeff Dunn and his turnaround team exhibited values-driven leadership, instituted cultural changes, and pursued opportunities to further Sesame's mission, including the inaugural MacArthur 100&Change award to tackle the worldwide refugee crisis in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. The $100 million winning project, Ahlan Simsim, was the largest early childhood program created in a humanitarian setting. By early 2020, Sesame had a mission-aligned culture that laid the groundwork to make kids smarter, kinder, and stronger.

Beginning in March 2020, Sesame Workshop navigated a global pandemic and racial justice crisis, which caused unemployment, business shutdowns, school closures, and remote work. The CEO and team responded with new partnership using its assets and reinforcing its mission, including allying with CNN to produce free informational TV specials for children and their families and redoubling efforts to provide education to children in refugee camps. Sesame's culture of confidence helped it support its constituencies through the crises.

From 2008-2010 Anand Piramal ran a series of pilots for his digital healthcare startup, Piramal e-Swasthya (PeS) to "democratize healthcare" in rural areas of India. PeS ran into difficulties so Anand Piramal had to decide whether to continue the organization and if so how. In 2010, an unexpected opportunity emerged that could have significant implications for PeS's organizational structure and future prospects. Anand Piramal now faced several options for PeS. He needed to weigh the pros and cons of each option to make the best decision to fulfill his vision of providing quality healthcare services to "bottom-of-the-pyramid" populations. This case exemplifies the strategic decisions an entrepreneur must make to ensure that a social impact venture can be sustainable and scalable.

In 2010, Anand Piramal acquired the Health Management Research Institute (HMRI), a healthcare venture, and merged it with his original digital healthcare startup Piramal e-Swasthya (PeS), so that PeS became Piramal Swasthya. After acquiring HMRI, Piramal Swasthya scaled across 20 Indian states and became India's largest private primary healthcare initiative by implementing public-private partnerships with state governments. In 2012, Anand Piramal stepped down as CEO of Piramal Swasthya, leading to organizational change and a healthcare strategy focused on improving maternal health amongst India's most vulnerable populations. This case shows how an organization can achieve innovation at scale through cross-sector collaboration.

Gilberto Dimenstein, a well-known Brazilian journalist, created a new model called Catraca Livre in 2011 that connected residents of Sao Paulo with untapped resources by aggregating information into a centralized online platform. As an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard, Dimenstein developed Catraca Livre to fulfill the goal of fostering community empowerment. From 2011 to 2019, Catraca Livre grew to become a major news site in Brazil, serving over 50 million users over 8 digital channels. Catraca Livre expanded its scope to focus on digital campaigns, which combatted issues like sexual assault and fake news. Catraca Livre also scaled as an organization by achieving financial independence and no longer relying on funding from foundation, moving into a new headquarters, and adding an in-house technology team. After stepping down as CEO of Catraca Livre in May 2017, Dimenstein founded a new venture, ReciproCidade, which leverages the resources of Catraca Livre to stimulate creative community projects to further its social impact. This case shows how Dimenstein scaled Catraca Livre to have greater reach throughout Brazil through the use of digital technologies and offers a model for community empowerment and advocacy globally through a digital platform.