Center for Social Innovation

Published: November 24, 2008 Download  1 hour 07 minutes, 30.9mb, recorded 2008-05-22

The process of performance measurement for any organization is ultimately a learning process. How, then, can nonprofits more deliberately use evaluation to create "cultures of inquiry"? That is the topic of this part of the Stanford Social Innovation Review's conference on evaluation.

Heather Davidson, an education specialist, talks about her work helping two very different organizations more actively use measurement data to enhance the quality of their programs: Stanford University Medical Center, and a birthing clinic that delivers services to under-resourced communities in rural Tennessee. Stanford engineering professor and author Robert Sutton discusses how managers can best wade through "external" information in the form of managerial literature to figure out what tools, techniques, and approaches for improving organizational performance are most fruitful.

Alana Conner, panel moderator, is the senior editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Heather Davidson is an education specialist with the Department of Graduate Medical Education at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Robert I. Sutton is a professor of management science and engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he is the former codirector of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, an active researcher and cofounder in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and a cofounder and active member of the new “d.school,” a multidisciplinary program that teaches and spreads “design thinking.” Sutton is also an IDEO Fellow and a professor of organizational behavior, by courtesy, at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Sutton received his PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan and has served on the Stanford faculty since 1983. His most recent book is Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (The Free Press, 2002), which was selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the 10 best business books of the year.