Global Action Networks (GANs) are a leading innovation for scaling impact to address issues of common good. GANs are a specific type of innovation that brings together five strategic qualities.

A GAN's strategy:

1. is global
2. focuses on issues of common public interest (not profit-seeking).
3. develops interdisciplinary action-learning with real-time experiments to address novel and enduring challenges
4. creates a diverse network of organizations of stakeholders in their issue
5. generates systemic change by creating cross-sectoral (business-government-civil society) actions

GANs contrast with traditional approaches to global challenges and opportunities that focused upon national and intergovernmental organizations. Over the past few decades, as the pace of globalization has increased and environmental issues have grown, the limits of the nation-state have become increasingly apparent. Substantial disparities in wealth and seemingly intractable poverty in large regions, global health threats, pollution of the seas, and the growing pace of climate change are only a few examples of issues that are propelling the development of Global Action Networks. They organize around a particular issue and include Transparency International, the Forest Stewardship Council, the Microcredit Summit Campaign, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Global Water Partnership and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

Through its program for GANs, iScale supports an association of GANs called GAN-Net. GAN-Net brings together people working in GANs and experts to share knowledge and address challenges to the development of GANs. These challenges have been summarized as the need to build eight competencies.

See a short presentation (PPT) describing GANs and GAN-Net.