Here’s what I’ve found so far:

1) Business Model Generation (2010):
Two-fold evaluation: SWOT for Canvas as big picture and SWOT for each single component.

2) Morris, Schindehutte, Richardson, Allen (2006):
7 performance indicators: uniqueness, profit potential, internal consistency, imitability, robustness, adaptability, sustainability.
That’s great so far, however unclear how to operationalise this. There seems to be no method how to actually measure this.

3) Amit, Zott (2001):
4 performance indicators in their NICE-framework: novelty, lock-in, complementarity, efficiency.

4) Hamel (2000):
4 performance indicators: efficiency, uniqueness, fit, profit boosters.

Which ones do you find useful and have you come across other approaches that can be operationalised and are therefore useful for practitioners?

Other include:
One page business plan
10 step evaluation from Seth

EISENBACH: ……I wrote a book about the gay rights movement because I was appalled by the oppression and the discrimination against homosexuals in my America [KELLER: uhhmm..]. And this questioner asks, ‘What do so many of the churches have against homosexuals? And what about your church’s approach to homosexuality, is it a sin? Are they going to Hell?

KELLER: uhhh…let’s talk about my church first which will be a little easier than trying to answer for all the other churches of the world….but I’ll try [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]. I’m representing all the churches of the world alright, you know? [EISENBACH: but Christianity I mean….you, you…] Yeah, I know but let’s start with mine.

EISENBACH:…. You go to the Bible quite often and there are many evangelicals who would say it is listed as a sin in the Bible [KELLER: sin in the Bible, right.]…and these people are going to Hell.

KELLER: Right. Now…What you..first…ughhhh…Let’s talk about my church again [nervous laughter]. Let’s go back here. What we would say is…I think it’s unavoidable. I think most Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox Christians over the years have said, you read the Bible and the Bible has reservations. The Bible says homosexuality is not God’s original design for sexuality. Ok? There we are…you have it. The Bible also says, ‘Love your neighbor’. The Bible…in fact, The Good Samaritan parable which is how Jesus tells us to love our neighbor…you put a Jew and a Samaritan there. So, what Jesus is trying to say is everybody is your neighbor. Gay people are your neighbors. Uhhh…people who are of other faiths are your neighbors. People of other….. other…uhhhh….uhhh…races are your neighbors. And it’s the job of a Christian to do what Jesus did on the cross which was to give himself for people who were opposing Him and people who were diff….believe….didn’t believe in Him even. And so, a Christian is supposed to say, ‘I serve the needs and interests of all of my neighbors in the city, whether gay or straight, whether Hindu or Muslim. I mean Hindus, for example, don’t believe in the Trinity. It’s a different view than what the Bible says. Gay people have a different view of sexuality than generally what you see in the NT. I’m supposed to love my neighbors. So, what I don’t see is…at this point, I see some churches that are…basically, ignoring the places in the Bible that talk about homosexuality in order to love their gay neighbor. And I see other Christian churches taking very seriously what the Bible says about homosexuality but in a very self-righteous way. So, they actually do single out gay people. I mean, there are a number of conservative churches that will love their Hindu neighbors and will love their Muslim neighbors, and not their gay neighbors. And I really don’t think there is any excuse for that. So…that’s what [EISENBACH: Is…is] I mean, I…I….Therefore, I have to take some responsibility for being a member of the Christian Church for the oppression of homosexuals.

EISENBACH: Are committing homosexual acts sin….against God?

KELLER: uhhhh….What do you mean by ‘sin’? The answer is ‘yes’.

This is certainly a sensitive issue. I think Keller is largely correct. I think his comment, however raises some fundamental question for those who favor bridge-building with gays:

What does it mean to love gay people?
How can Christians & churches better love gay people?
Does loving gay people mean preaching against a homosexual or alternative lifestyle in church?
How can mainline protestant churches re-establish a relationship (and trust) with gay people and gay communities?

(link)

Here is the full repository which include a fuller range of experiential and emotional responses with a product, service, or brand.

This is a pretty impressive list. I think the focus is on top academic schools (or top MBA schools which happen to have a robust social entrepreneurship course offering). I don’t think this distinguishes between types of social entrepreneurship (which is both difficult and par for the course) but important to think about for budding social entrepreneurs:
1. social business which serves the US (or developed countries like the US). For instance, those signified as a B-Corporation.
2. impact investing (and high impact philanthropy)
3. bottom of the pyramid (serving the poorest of the poor that live on $2 to $4 a day)
4. corporate social responsibility
5. green business/sustainability (either as a business or for the Fortune 1000)
6. education entrepreneurship
7. non profit sector (high impact non-profit sector and/or non-profit organizations with earned income revenue)
8. public administration/government.
9. public health

Also, at this point I should admit–ranking systems are imperfect (each person needs to bring their own needs & personality as a filter, as well as outside information about the schools for their research process–particularly given the time and money invested in graduate school). However, ranking systems are an ok indicator of faculty, mission, programs in a particular area. Note: the author of Poets and Quants doesn’t seem to have a system for ranking from what I can tell–but a general read on quality programs.
Other Heuristics to Slice and dice with:
1. Competitiveness/rank in another area as well (ie marketing, supply chain, entrepreneurship, health care management, etc..)
2. City of Choice (Boston, NYC, Austin, almost anything in California–but mostly Berkeley and Palo Alto)
3. State School or perhaps Price (Berkeley & Michigan are the only ones listed–but UT-Austin, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the University of Indiana all have decent programs–combined with specialties in multiple disciplines.)

John A Bryne does a more extensive job of investigating–qualitatively–than others might do and has interesting comparisons included. (It would be nice to know if he has connections to any of these schools–ie his alma matre for undergrad and/or B-school). The full article can be read here.

“They need to be agile, creative problem solvers who draw their knowledge from multiple perspectives both domestic and global, who approach the world with empathy, and who are ready to act with others to improve the quality of life for all.

“Another name for these graduates is democratic citizens.”
A National Call for Action: A Crucible Moment

National Association of Colleges and Employers: Ranked List of Important Candidate Skills and Qualities

1. Ability to work in a team structure
2. Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization
3. Ability to make decisions and solve problems
4. Ability to obtain and process information
5. Ability to plan, organize, and prioritize work
6. Ability to analyze quantitative data
7. Technical knowledge related to the job
8. Proficiency with computer software programs
9. Ability to create and/or edit written reports
10. Ability to sell or influence others

Job Outlook 2012 Survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (the full report, unfortunately is almost $50 for non-members)

“I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the conditions, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.”
Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius Camden Blatchly 1822

I have to credit Ken O’Donnell for assembling the above quotes (the cited material from the talk is available on Google docs if you click the link on his About page.

According to one IBM report, today more than 70 percent of the U.S. labor force is engaged in service delivery. New technology has enabled internationally tradable services. We are at a tipping point. A huge portion of the economy is now focused on knowledge-based information services. I believe that as we shift to this service-centered society, it won’t be good enough to view services from a purely management or operations-based perspective. Companies will need to turn to service design and innovation to differentiate themselves in increasingly competitive markets and to create opportunities that address new challenges in the service sector.

How is designing a service different than designing a product?

When designing a product, much of the focus is on mediating the interaction between the person and the artifact. Great product designers consider more of the context in their design. In service design, designers must create resources that connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. You must consider the environment, the channel, the touchpoint. Designing for service becomes a systems problem and often even a system of systems challenge. The elements or resources that designers need to create to mediate the interactions must work on all these levels and at the same time facilitate connections that are deeply personal, open to participation and change, and drop-dead stunning.

(link)

Shelly Everson, School of Design @ Carnegie Mellon University

Core concepts of design thinking in the health care context:
Understanding
Integration
Openness
Attention
Exploration
Envisioning
-Shelly Everson, School of Design @ Carnegie Mellon University

Explanation of design thinking concepts as applied to health care services:
Understanding (in the small and large) a focus on deeply understanding people’s expressed and latent needs viewed in the context of broader social, economic, and technical trends.
Integration the ability to organize and integrate disparate information into something many stakeholders–with different viewpoints–believe is better.
Openness fearless with regard to listening to another person
or learning from another discipline or division’s perspective
Attention respect for emotion and its importance in driving rational choice and satisfaction.
Exploration letting creative extremes take you into ever richer solutions spaces.
Envisioning leaps of faith as to what might work and creating quick, tangible examples of it,
while being unafraid to discard design options along the way.
-Shelly Everson, School of Design @ Carnegie Mellon University

3 Big Needs:
New methods for modeling customer experience.
New models for skilling everyday people to become active participants in their care.
Innovative prototyping for exploring new healthcare service delivery systems
-Shelly Everson, School of Design @ Carnegie Mellon University

You can learn more about design thinking in the medical context at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation here.

Finding out and learning
Learning about clients, contexts, the service provider, & providing insights.

Giving strategic direction
Strategic and analytic tasks the that help identify, plan, set, review, & analyze and give project direction.

Developing concepts
Developing relevant, innovative ideas and concepts. Creating solutions

Selecting the best
Selecting ideas and combining concepts. Evaluating results and solutions.

Enabling understanding
Sensualization and mapping. Making concepts tangible, showing future possibilities, and giving overview.

Making it happen
Implementing and delivery. Providing guidelines and plans.

Based on Practical Access to Service Design

Selected Bibliography for Design Thinking in Management from Richard Buchanan & Fred Collopy

Readings will be assigned from time to time and distributed in class or placed on the class Blackboard site.
The following books are recommended for your study during and after the course. Life is long. Learn to read widely.

Matteson, Michael T. & John M. Ivancevich, eds. Management and Organizational Behavior Classics.
Shafritz, Jay M. & J. Steven Ott, eds. Classics of Organization Theory. Natemeyer, Walter E. & Jay S. Gilberg, eds. Classics of Organizational Behavior.
Design, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation
Boland, Richard J. & Fred Collopy, eds. Managing as Designing.
Buchanan, Richard & Victor Margolin, eds. Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies.
Diller, Steve, Nathan Shedroff, & Darrel Rhea. Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences.
Drucker, Peter F. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Martin, Roger, The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive
Advantage. Pine, B. Joseph & James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater & Every

Business a Stage.
Schon, Donald A., The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.
Verganti, Roberto, Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean.
Management & Organization Theory Drucker, Peter F. The Practice of Management. ________. Concept of the Corporation. George, Claude S. The History of Management Thought. [Excellent brief history]
March, James & Herbert Simon. Organizations.
Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.
Wren, Daniel A. The History of Management Thought. [More detailed and sophissticated than Claude S. George’s history, but also more academic and theoretic in emphasis, minimizing some practically important figures.]
Economics Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.

Visualization
Buxton, Bill. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.
Harris, Robert L. Information Graphics: Visual Tools for Analyzing, Managing, and Communicating: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference.
Horn, Robert E. Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. Hyerle, David. Visual Tools for Constructing Knowledge. [Useful overview of tools] Novak, Joseph D. & D. Bob Gowin. Learning How to Learn. [Highly recommended]
General Themes Whitbeck, Caroline. Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research.

You can find the rest of the syllabuses here from the re-thinking the MBA book from the Harvard Business School (Buchanan also sees design entrepreneurship as important in addition to design as management or vice versa).

1. Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.

2. Neither grants nor markets alone will solve the problems of poverty.

3. Poverty is a description of someone’s economic situation, it does not describe who someone is.

4. We won’t succeed in the long term without cultivating local leaders, local money, and strong local communities.

5. Great people, every time, no exceptions.

6. Great technology alone is not the answer.

7. If failing is not an option, you’ve ruled out success as well.

8. Governments rarely invent solutions, but they can scale what works.

9. There is no currency like trust, and there are no shortcuts to earning it.

10. Patient capital investing is built upon a system of values; it is not a series of steps to be followed.

You can read the full report here which explains her methodology and philosophy for BOP social change. [Note: its a PDF download]

1. the people
2. the community
3. the methodology & systems
4. results

How do you best check how you are investing in these areas?

Credibility of Organization:
Do I know the person running or working at the organization? How long have I known the person? *
Have I seen and heard the stories of real people effected by their programs?
Impact Evaluation & Data Transparency for Results:
Can they track results? Do they track results?
Are they transparent about results?
Can they provide data input & output (ie effectiveness and/or impact evaluation)?
Do they have a track record of success?
Are they a high impact organization? Is there a big ripple effect?
Goals, Objectives & Personal Sync:
Do I have multiple goals for my investment?

There may be better ways to evaluate organization….but I though these questions could be focused into 3 to 4 core questions for each individual–and provide a credible and effective criteria for impact investment in non-profit organizations. I hope this list can help you provide a criteria to increase the impact of your investments. I’ve also included this article on evaluating nonprofit organizations which I published earlier on Compassion in Politics.

* This is not to discourage investment in overseas organization–but just to think through those decisions to ensure you are working with a credible organization. I primarily am interested in avoiding political orgs/non-profit orgs that are basically sales letter driven but can’t effectively demonstrate impact, transparency, data, or credibility.

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
— Stephen Fry

1. Influence versus control distinction lost on scientists. This distinction is important (and much of the neuroscience and philosophical theory from determinists around free will likely can’t tell the full scope of the nuance). Further, to suggest that Da Vinci, Einstein, Bach, Lincoln, and the rest of the heros of history are just molecules bouncing around and don’t have meaningful selves….seems to belie both history and fundamental notions of rationality and common sense.
2. Burden of proof on the scientists or philosophers who suggest we are 100% determined, with no meaningful free choice or agency. How much 10%, 25, 50, 75, 85, 95, 100% influenced/controlled by external forces? (how many types of human behavior can we predict? how credible or reliable are those predictions?)
3. Question begging–science isn’t meant to find agency (this is huge–aka the data don’t prove anything about agency)
4. Not mutual exclusive to have atoms bouncing around and for those same atoms to have free will. Like seeing a ship and assuming things about the engine room or the captains chambers without seeing, hearing, and feeling the experience first hand.
5. Determinism destroys ethics and personal responsibility. This is not only meaningful for our notions of retribution and punishment, but also our internal capacity to deal with the world. Without a system of punishment and reward–and one thats “worked” for 2000+ years–we’re left with cultural, social, and personal anarchy.
6. Your studies are flawed. Ask Alfred Mele. And there are many models of human behavior short of absolute determinism (chart here, which emphasizes a high burden of proof for absolute determinists).
7. Your conclusions are flawed. They fit the data like bad suits. The map doesn’t fit the territory (also see #1 and #3). If anything they prove that the universe works in a cause and effect way. Also Thomas Kuhn in the “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” answers your argument (its sometimes difficult for 2 worldview modes to dialog).
8. Quantum mechanics answers your misguided neurobiology arguments.
9. Performative contradiction. The act of science is an act of free will.
10. Determinism is a no-win solution. Free will is just better. You have to act like free will exists–its best for action, sanity, purpose, meaning, ethics, and everything human. Humans without prioritization and meaning can’t function (its almost humans without math).
11. Determinism is non-falsifiable. (similar to are we in a dream….as such its not a productive discussion. Or for instance, you could use the allegory of the fish in a stream and have the fish project what they think is outside the stream. this mirrors the boat metaphor ).
12. Motivational & Biases [worldview bias]:
a. money
b. control
c. media and book sales
d. publish or perish
e. agnosticism, atheism, or need to prove the lack of a self or a soul.
13. You give too much credit to science and underestimate the ability of other disciplines to create knowledge. This unicausal framework (particularly when wedded with the bad suit metaphor) isn’t a good way to try to address the most important questions–of human value and sacredness. Plus its toolbox is limited. Would you use a woodworkers tools to attempt to perform mental health or medical health? Generally, in 99% of cases thats probably a bad idea (nails, hammers, and screwdrivers aren’t appropriate or even optimal for solving these problems–and at a bare minimum any solution would come from a fusion of ideas and knowledge–not just carpenter knowledge. My guess is many engineers profit from expanding their wings beyond just the sciences for knowledge, insight, and perspective.)
14. Personal experience verifies the self and choice. The contrast between choice and control and addiction is rather distinct. Disregarding this experience based data is a terrible error, because its the most verifiable. (the feeling and experience of free will is ethically important. and we understand ourselves as selfs. whether you can chart that out like a chemistry chart doesn’t deny that we are selves, and meaningfully so)
15. Brain mapping & fMRI studies are imperfect and flawed (fMRI stands for functional magnetic imaging).
a) Measures indirectly–oxygenation flow–not the actual brain firings:

fMRI is a decidedly indirect measure of brain activity, as it does not measure “thinking” processes or even neural changes directly, but merely oxygenated blood flow. Scientists have even discovered that blood flow through astrocytes, glial cells that are thought to play a largely supportive role in the brain, are the main source of the fMRI signal, not neurons. In other words, the BOLD signal may not be the unquestionably valid representation of cognitive processes that researchers sometimes claim it is.

(Source).
b) Suffer from circular logic:

The problem arises when researchers then go on to provide their readers with a quantitative measure of the correlation magnitude measured just within the voxels they have pre-selected for having a high correlation. This two-step procedure is circular: it chooses voxels that have a high correlation, and then estimates a high average correlation. This practice inflates the correlation measurement because it selects those voxels that have benefited from chance, as well as any real underlying correlation, pushing up the numbers.

(Jonah Lehrer in Scientific American from the article “Voo Doo Correlations in Neuroscience” available here–to be fair the truth may lie a bit in between)
c) For instance, the fMRI data doesn’t meet lie detection standards yet:

Elizabeth Phelps, a neuroscientist at New York University, agreed there is little evidence that fMRI is more reliable than previous lie-detection methods.
“When you build a model based on people in the laboratory, it may or may not be that applicable to someone who has practiced their lie over and over, or someone who has been accused of something,” Phelps said. “I don’t think that we have any standard of evidence that this data is going to be reliable in the way that the courts should be admitting.”

(Link)
d) Its application to criminal justice may be more hype than not (particularly with current crude science in its early stages) (link):

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather he determines himself whether he give in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. Therefore, we can predict his future only within the large framework of statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains unpredictable. The basis of any prediction would be represented by biological, psychological, or sociological conditions. Yet one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
What he becomes–within the limits of endowment and environment–he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

Victor Frankl, Professor in Neurology and Psychology
Using life experience, including living in 4 concentration camps as his evidence
Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 131 to 134