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Today’s article was inspired by a conversation at a recent indoor agricultural conference with Andrew Montgomery, President of the Indoor Farm Foundation. We were discussing current challenges with the growth of the small-scale indoor farming sector. Andy had many thoughts about this, one of which is the cautious approach that farmers take to growing their businesses. This is in part because farmers can only assess the benefits of their technological investments at the end of their growing seasons, so they may be reluctant to finance radically different approaches without more extensive evidence of success.

Equally as important, Andy believes that it is the lack of supportive infrastructure that may also hold farmers back. Who can help design and set up new farm? From whom do they receive seed, growing substrates, and plant nutrients? Where do they send their produce once it has been harvested? And perhaps most importantly, who are the customers for hydroponically-produced crops? What is the demand? Andy’s plan is to identify a few willing farmers in areas where supporting infrastructure exists and demonstrate the viability indoor farming as a complement to traditional farming techniques.

I was impressed with Andy’s vision and his insight about the supply chain and support systems necessary to make this technological leap possible. Similar logic applies to the social development space. In Erin Ganju and my book, Scaling global change: A social entrepreneur’s guide to surviving the start-up phase and driving impact, we discuss the importance of a strong organizational foundation to drive social change. The strength of the operating environment has a similar effect.

For example, governments around the world and the international development community have invested substantially over the past 20 years in improving children’s early grade literacy. This includes better instructional practices, textbooks, workbooks, supplementary reading materials, and monitoring and tracking procedures. At the same time, we know that the returns on these investments—children’s success in learning to read—is much stronger in places that already have a culture of reading. If children are already surrounded by street signs, books in homes, and people reading newspapers, they are more likely to become readers than children in places where no written words can be found.

Similarly, governments around the world and the international development community continue to make major investments in youth workforce development. This can include training programs, counseling, and job matching services. Like investments in early grade reading, youth training programs are much more successful in geographies that have a demand for workers.

These examples may seem obvious but are often an afterthought rather than part of early project planning. Part of the problem in less-developed contexts is that enabling environments simply do not exist or are minuscule compared to more-developed contexts. What, then, should communities, governments, and social development practitioners do to support project success in less conducive operating environments? Here are three ideas for improving the likelihood of project success:

1. Consider the operating environment as part of project planning. One approach to project implementation is to identify locations that already have the infrastructure for success. In the case of Andy Montgomery’s farm experiment, he is looking for geographies for entrepreneurial growers in places that might already have local seed producers or nearby packaging and distribution centers. This would allow the farmers to focus on production and harvesting instead of all aspects of new hydroponic growing processes. As any savvy real estate professional will tell you, “location, location, location” is what matters most in making business (and perhaps even personal) decisions.

2. Support the growth of enabling environments. As James, Kamille, and I have written in the previous few articles, governments play an important role in creating enabling environments for social development. They provide social services, set the rules for business growth, and set the rules for the growth of civil society organizations. It can therefore be helpful to assess the CSO operating environment and work with governments and other stakeholders both to grow this sector and promote more collaboration among government institutions, businesses, and civil society.

3. Grow the enabling environment. Leaders can also develop the kinds of projects that directly create the enabling environments. For example, Room to Read has been working for almost 25 years to create beautiful school libraries around the world with storybooks in local languages for children who otherwise do not have access to reading resources. These activities therefore build the culture of reading that in turn promote the habit of reading, thereby creating a virtuous cycle and grow positive reading behavior that in many places would not otherwise exist. Similarly, in places with few job prospects, perhaps the best approach to youth employment is training in entrepreneurship. This approach can stimulate economic growth and development instead of keeping young people constrained by the uncertainties of anemic labor markets.

How often do you think about the operating environment in creating project designs? Please join the conversation and let us know what you think.