Every effort to change the systems that hold tough economic, social and environmental problems in place is unique and requires a customized strategy. Therefore, any evaluation to evaluate a systems change effort requires an equally unique design. There are, however, universal challenges, principles and help practices that are relevant across...

Changing the systems that keep stubborn problems like homelessness or racism in place.  Its easy to talk about. Everyone seems interested. Few people are quite sure what it means or practice or how to evaluate it. This inquiry framework offers one way to think about, plan and evaluate such efforts....

The idea that diverse organizations in the community working together can improve their chances of success by adopting 'shared measurements' is one of the core principles of the wildly popular collective impact approach to social change. This paper argues that the 'why' of shared measurement is clear, but the practice...

Learning is an outcome in social innovation.  In order to make progress on a tough issue, social innovation must interact with it, try things out., perhaps fail, and try again. And in the process, they learn more about the nature of the challenge they are trying to address, the systems...

Developing and evaluating the experimental phase in social innovation is one thing. Driving and assessing efforts to scale successful social innovations is quite another. This evaluation framework, based on some of Canadian's leading innovators, describes dimensions of scaling that should be front and central in any scaling effort and offers...

Many social innovators tackling tough problems are driven and guided by principles, not models or blue-prints.  This very important new book by Michael Quinn Patton breaks new ground in how to evaluate their efforts....

Developing and testing promising ideas through prototyping  is becoming a 'mainstream' practice of social innovators. Ironically, there are few resources out there to help them evaluate their efforts. This resource helps fill the gap....

I often get asked which groups I follow to stay up to date in the world of strategy, so here are some of the sites which I turn to regularly for new ideas. American Evaluation Association. http://www.eval.org/ Better Evaluation: http://betterevaluation.org/ Cognitive Edge. http://cognitive-edge.com/SIG Human Systems Dynamic Institute. http://www.hsdinstitute.org/ Margaret Wheatley. http://margaretwheatley.com/ REOS Partners. http://www.reospartners.com/ Social Innovation Generation....