The document discusses the importance of business models and their evolution, particularly in the context of the 'lean startup' approach, highlighting the challenges and opportunities for social and sustainable entrepreneurship. It emphasizes how experimentation and pivoting are vital for ventures operating in high complexity environments. Additionally, it poses questions about whether social ventures pivot more than traditional organizations and how studying these ventures can influence entrepreneurial mindsets.

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