How can communities reshape society beyond markets and states? And what are the mechanisms through which community enterprises (CEs) can transform our economy to tackle urgent sustainability challenges such as climate change? These questions lie at the heart of the Scaling the Societal Impact of CEs for Sustainability (SCENSUS) programme, run by Dr Thomas Bauwens of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. In this talk, Dr Bauwens will present the preliminary results and first findings of the programme. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK, the SCENSUS programme studies three forms of CEs in key sustainability fields: renewable energy, the circular economy, and car-sharing. By studying CEs that have achieved varying levels of scaling, SCENSUS aims to develop a multi-level, unified theory of the mechanisms by which CEs can scale their societal impacts. With the SCENSUS programme, Dr Bauwens and his team aim to 1) Introduce a new interdisciplinary theory of the dynamics of CEs within the wider political economy; 2) Advance the research frontier on collective action and organisation studies; 3) Change the current thinking about the role of markets and states as an inescapable dichotomy that dominates the way modern societies build institutions and organisations; and 4) Contribute to emerging perspectives on a post-growth world and alternatives to capitalism.