Bridging Perspectives: Academic and Practitioner Knowledge on Collective Impact for Social Innovation and Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract This article compares the knowledge produced by the academic and practical communities regarding the collective impact (CI) approach to social innovation, exploring its implications for the fields of social innovation and nonprofit organizations. We conducted a literature review of articles published in journals focused on practitioners and academic journals, covering the approach's first ten years (2011–2021). The findings highlight seven key themes of comparison. They concern different understandings of CI, various fields of application, equity in the CI approach, CI application in advocacy initiatives, criticisms of the CI approach, real-world applications and methodological approaches, and the importance of community integration and a bottom-up approach in CI. The article's contributions revolve around building a bridge between the knowledge produced by each community and providing a critical analysis of key themes addressed by them, including equity, cross-sector collaboration, and advocacy, while connecting empirical findings to both theoretical and practical implications for NPOs.