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After a period of crisis and transition, Impact Hub has emerged as a global structure that is partly a movement, partly a business, and partly a network. Along the way, its leaders-a group of people devoted to social innovation-had to master the art of organizational innovation.
In early 2010, leaders from the Hub network gathered near Amsterdam for what amounted to an emergency meeting. Efforts to create a reliable structure for sustaining growth at the global level had led to a series of conflicts among those who had founded Hub sites in cities such as London, Melbourne, and San Francisco. "At that point, there was a collapse of trust," says Alberto Masetti-Zannini, founder of Hub Milan. "We realized we needed to get together and face our demons to redesign the dysfunctional system that we had created. It was quite painful, but one thing came across very clearly: When a system begins to change, there is no stopping it."
The system in question-now called Impact Hub, after a major rebranding effort that concluded in early 2013-today includes nearly 50 active sites. Each site gives social innovators flexible access to places where they can work, learn, and collaborate. In the language of the new branding, Impact Hub is a "global network of people, places, and programs" that enables users to "catalyze impact." Leaders of the organization expect more than 100 sites to be in operation by 2015.
But in 2010, five years after the opening of the first Hub, the organization had reached a turning point. The Hub system had become dysfunctional because its leaders had failed to create a structure that would effectively blend the interests and aspirations of its stakeholders. The decisive question was this: What kind of an organization would the Hub become as it expanded globally? Or, to be more specific, how would it navigate the tension between serving a movement, building a business, and sustaining a network?
I had a front-row seat as Hub leaders from around the world wrestled with those questions. In 2010,1 had recently cofounded Hub Zürich. Partly because I was new to the Hub Network and partly because I have a background in organizational change, my fellow Hub founders elected me to the global leadership team. In...