Applying the lean startup model to social ventures! Full paper available - email me at norris.krueger@gmail.com or tweet me @entrep_thinking

1. Don’t TASE Me, BRO! :)
NYU Satter Conference 2012
Franziska Günzel, Aarhus
Norris Krueger, Entrepreneurship
Northwest

2. Don’t TASE Me, BRO! :)
• Or… Why we all need to take business models
and business model evolution seriously.
• And the research implications of the tidal
wave of “lean startup”
• And how social and sustainable
entrepreneurship is a brilliant domain to study
this!

3. A quick primer
• What’s a “business model”?
• Definitions/operationalizations all over the
map
• Basically, the recipe… usually centers on:
– 1) Value identification/creation
– 2) Value delivery
– 3) Value capture

4. Obligatory research background
• Definitional, um, “diversity”?
– The “New Heffalumps”?
• Static
• Top-down (org theory/strategy?)
• Ignores continuous learning?
• Tide is turning, though (AoM workshops)
• Anyone here from SEJ? (Special issue
upcoming… hint, hint)

5. OK, show of hands?
• How many of you know a successful venture
that NEVER changed any of its business model
from Day One?
• How many know a venture that likely failed
because its business model failed to evolve?
• How many know a social venture that likely
failed because its business model failed to
evolve?

6. “Lean Startup”
• Not THAT new
• Beautifully codified by Blank, Ries, Osterwalder
• Even more beautifully marketed by …. 
• Startup = Vehicle for validating all critical assumptions behind
your business model
• Entrepreneurship becomes Experimentation
• Critical for high complexity/uncertainty environs (TBL?)
• Dexter-izes “Inventors Syndrome”?
• (lean approach forces people  entrepreneurial mindset)
• So what about Social/sustainable Ventures?

7. Key Elements
• Pivot
• MVP
• [Minimum Viable Product]
• GOOT[F]B?
• Business Model Canvas

8. What’s Different for Social Ventures?
• And how can studying social ventures pay off?
• MVP – different when stakes are high?
• “Inventors Syndrome”?
• Canvas – different terminology, diff boxes or ?
• Impact of Impact Investors?
• Design Thinking – key to pivots under high
complexity?

9. A modest agenda…
• Do social ventures pivot more than entrenched
bureaucracies?
• Is this something we can teach? (AAAS/NSF)
• Lean Startup for social ventures – impact on
developing entrepreneurial mindset?
• Does expertise at D-Thinking matter? (D2M)
• Contests – emergent phenomena
• How does this change our metrics? The metrics
of impact investors?
• What tools can use to assess changes – diaries?

10. But what do YOU think???
• Other ideas??

11. So……
• Want to join the fun?
– Franziska Günzel, f.guenzel[at]googlemail.com
– Norris Krueger norris.krueger[at]gmail.com or
@entrep_thinking
– Growing numbers at AoM & elsewhere
• And…
– Dell Social Innovation Challenge [www.dellchallenge.org]
• Rob Hanna @socialwealth, rawhanna[at]gmail.com
– Wm James Foundation [www. williamjamesfoundation.org]
• Ian Fisk @iantfisk, @WJF_Competition
• ian.fisk[at]williamjamesfoundation.org

12. oh, yeah…. We lied…
• Do TASE Me, BRO!
• TASE =
– Test Assumptions Specifically & Experimentally
• BRO =
– Blank - Ries – Osterwalder