By Mackenzie White | Ivey Research Office | July 11, 2025
Strategic Pluralism in Action: A Scholarly Perspective on Driving Social Innovation Through Local Strategy
As organizations increasingly face complex social and environmental challenges with uneven regional impacts, a critical question looms: How can local teams pursue fresh ideas that creatively address distinct regional needs while simultaneously contributing to the overall strategic mission of an organization?
In her latest article published in Strategic Management Journal titled “Curating 1000 flowers as they bloom: Leveraging pluralistic initiatives to diffuse social innovations,” Assistant Professor of Strategy Dr. Esther Leibel tackles this question by examining how organizations can cultivate a culture of social innovation through pluralistic, locally grounded initiatives.
Using the case of the Slow Money movement, this research investigates how local teams within multi-unit organizations can pursue innovative solutions tailored to regional needs while contributing to a shared strategic mission. Leibel examines how aligning local resources and opportunities with different facets of an organization’s mission can catalyze both localized impact and broader systemic change. The study also explores how mission alignment can drive meaningful social innovation, and how varied approaches to this alignment can enable creativity without compromising organizational coherence.
From Consultant to Ethnographic Academic: A Career Shaped by Systems Thinking
Before entering academia, Leibel worked as a sustainability consultant advising clients to incorporate sustainability concerns into their mainstream strategies. Her work guided clients to think beyond short-term compliance, and toward embedding long-term environmental and social considerations into their strategic frameworks.
Now in her academic research, she believes that businesses have the power and responsibility to develop social innovations that address the social and environmental challenges our society faces, such as mitigating climate change, promoting health equity and wellness, and building community resilience. However, these “grand challenges” play out differently in each setting, requiring solutions that match their environment- while still sticking to the organization’s big-picture strategy. Leibel’s research shows how organizations can build a culture of social innovation by launching diverse local initiatives that meet community needs while staying true to their core mission.
On the Ground with Slow Money
The article explores the grassroots world of Slow Money with an in-depth study of the decentralized nonprofit that supports local food systems and regenerative agriculture across the United States. This fieldwork brought Leibel face-to-face with the realities of local experimentation; how community leaders improvised in response to shifting priorities, unpredictable funding, and localized needs. These leaders were not simply implementing orders from headquarters- they were co-creators of strategy, transforming abstract values into tangible practices that made sense in their own backyards. Local groups of Slow Money launched programs that reflected their specific ecosystems, such as seed-saving initiatives in Vermont, and indigenous-led food projects in New Mexico. These were not one-size-fits-all approaches. They reflected the distinct priorities, cultural dynamics, and resource landscapes of each region. This pattern highlighted that mission-driven experimentation made Slow Money both resilient and responsive.
A Decentralized Answer to Global Problems
Ultimately, the research offers the compelling perspective that lasting solutions to major challenges frequently arise from grassroots efforts tailored to the specific needs of the region, not from central leadership. Issues like climate change, food insecurity, and inequality manifest differently from region to region, and the local group has the most insight into the impact. Leibel therefore argues that for organizations to effectively address profound environmental and social challenges, they must align their overarching mission with the unique resources, needs, and cultural contexts of local communities at the grassroots level.
Her findings further show that if organizations are truly committed to systems of change, they need to build structures that allow for local adaptation while maintaining a strong central mission. This is better known as adopting strategic pluralism: a model in which multiple interpretations of a shared purpose can flourish simultaneously.
The Role of the Center
In this pluralistic model, the role of the center shifts from command to curation support. Rather than mandating programs, the central office of Slow Money amplified local success stories, facilitated cross-group learning, and created a portfolio of proven approaches that others could draw from.
This shift in leadership mindset from control to connection enabled distributed innovation. It also fostered trust: local groups felt seen, valued, and free to test ideas that made sense for their communities.
Lessons for Practitioners: Purpose as the Anchor
The implications of Leibel’s research are wide-reaching, particularly for mission-driven organizations operating with tight budgets. An organization simply requires a clarity of purpose, and the opportunity to let that purpose evolve in context. This purpose-led flexibility becomes a strategic asset. When an organization allows its mission to be reinterpreted locally, it unlocks new forms of creativity and relevance. Leibel’s research further highlights that social innovations create a mosaic of aligned innovations, each reflecting the unique challenges and possibilities of its environment.
New Frontiers: Transforming Agri-Food Systems
Building on the principles of strategic pluralism, Leibel now works with the System Transformation Pathways (STP) initiative at the Ivey Centre for Building Sustainable Value. Based in Ontario, this collaborative project brings together a cross-sector coalition of farmers, retailers, investors, and policy makers to explore how procurement and financing structures can better support regenerative agriculture.
Leibel continues to explore how institutions can enable strategic pluralism rather than standardized innovation in both research and practice. Now cutting across industries, the same questions still apply: how do organizations hold space for different voices while moving toward common goals?
Leibel also supports the research of fifth year PhD Candidate Michelina Aguanno in the Sustainability Area group at Ivey Business School. Click to learn more about Michelina’s contributions in the Ivey PhD Program.
Research at Eye Level: The Power of Immersive Fieldwork
Despite her shift into academic leadership and multi-stakeholder collaborations, Leibel remains deeply grounded in the value of fieldwork. “When I’m stuck, I return to my fieldnotes,” she admits. “[By reading my notes] I find myself once again immersed in the settings I studied years before. I see the faces of my informants, the environment around them, their appearances and behaviors, and the messages they were trying to convey.”
She credits her ethnographic training for teaching her to listen closely and think holistically. Good strategy begins with good listening: an ethos that guides Leibel’s approach to research, teaching, mentoring, and collaboration with institutional partners.
Toward a Legacy of Rigorous, Impactful Inquiry
As Leibel looks to the future, she envisions a legacy that bridges rigorous scholarship and real-world engagement. She hopes to be remembered as an ethnographer who “cared deeply about the role of business in solving environmental and societal issues and interacted with like-minded people to learn how to facilitate [these conversations].” Leibel continues to be someone who asks tough questions in her research about the role of business in society and stays close enough to the ground to find meaningful answers.