Business support

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

How can funders enable business support providers to experiment?

By Doug Scott, Cavendish Enterprise on Wednesday, 17 February 2021.

In our previous blog post, we were talking to Doug Scott, Chair of Cavendish Enterprise, about what he learned from leading a randomised trial of the Business Boost scheme, carried out under the UK Government’s Business Basics Programme. In this post, we continue our conversation with Doug, this time focusing on how funders can best manage experimentation funds and ensure that they produce learning that leads to better policy decisions.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Looking behind the scenes of a business support RCT

By Doug Scott, Cavendish Enterprise on Tuesday, 16 February 2021.

In a recent post, we highlighted the findings from the randomised trial of the Business Boost project, carried out by Cavendish Enterprise in collaboration with the Enterprise Research Centre. Since this was the first randomised trial to be completed under the UK Government’s Business Basics Programme, it was a learning process for the implementers, the evaluators, and for us in the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL). Together with a colleague from the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, we recently chatted with Doug Scott, Chair of Cavendish Enterprise and the instigator of the Business Boost trial, to find out what he had learned during the process.

People Shaking Hands in Latex Gloves by Branimir Balogovic

“Act Fast and Do Whatever It Takes”: Leading economists’ recommendations for business support during COVID-19

By Eszter Czibor on Tuesday, 24 March 2020.

In this post, we collect insights from the book which we hope will be particularly useful for policymakers designing crisis support for businesses, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular, during this time.

Puzzle pieces

How to learn and improve on what we do in the rugged landscape of programmes and policies?

By Triin Edovald on Monday, 4 April 2016.

As more and more governments attempt to base their policies on sound evidence, randomised controlled trials - the 'gold standard' in evaluation - are gaining a stronger role in determining which policies work. But are they really the best way to tell us which policies should be used? This blogpost explores how to improve our ability to learn and better design things that work.

Continue reading

EU flags

As much as €152 billion is spent across Europe supporting businesses: but does it work?

By Teo Firpo and Thomas Beevers on Friday, 11 March 2016.

Our estimates for the spending on business support across the European Union, based on our research for the UK, indicate that as much as €152 billion were spent in 2014. In this blog, we explore what this means for Europe, and what could be done better.

Continue reading

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Business support