Trials

The Impact of Intellectual Property Protection on Firm Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial

To what extent does patent protection change product market outcomes?

The granting of patent rights is a central public policy tool to incentivise innovation, but the incentive that patents offer works indirectly. Rather than directly subsidising R&D costs (as in other mechanisms, such as tax credits), or attempting to make up for any differences between the public and private incentives to research, patents provide incentive through product market protection.

Corporate Nudging & Intrapreneurship

Can subtle non-monetary nudges be used to influence intrapreneurial behaviour in a large corporation?

Intrapreneurship, or bottom-up entrepreneurial activities by employees from existing firms, can be an important source of innovation and organisational growth. Management of intrapreneurship, however, is highly complex as it is typically considered discretionary behaviour and is generally not formalised in job descriptions. Innovation competitions is one way to stimulate this type of behaviour within firms

From our blog

Wednesday, 30 October 2024

New research provides the first experimental evidence distinguishing between two fundamental approaches to entrepreneurial training: developing managerial capital versus entrepreneurial capital.

Wednesday, 23 October 2024

How we helped the EIC unlock new insights through synthetic data collaboration

Monday, 14 October 2024

IGL has launched a new Data Science and Technology Unit. Find out what it will do for a vision of data powered policy and organisations.

Discover our new programme!
We just launched our "Unlocking Innovative Potential: Experimentation" programme.
Learn about how organisations are becoming more experimental
Despite the importance of innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship for economic growth, there is still little evidence on how best to create impactful support. We believe that we need a more experimental approach to innovation and growth policy, trialling new instruments but also evaluating them more rigorously. Browse our Trials Database to see what organisations are learning from experimentation!

Our Partners

The Innovation Growth Lab is an international initiative led by Nesta in partnership with several public and private organisations around the world.

Our research network

The IGL Research Network includes over 100 researchers from around the world working on randomised controlled trials related to innovation, high-growth entrepreneurship and growth.

Irani Arráiz
IDB Invest
Andreas Moxnes
University of Oslo
Andrea Contigiani
University of Pennsylvania
Amisha Miller
Boston University
Dyana Mason
University of Oregon, School of Planning Public Policy and Management
Santiago Reyes Ortega
World Bank
Sean Carr
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
John Van Reenen
LSE
Richard Kneller
University of Nottingham
Jana Gallus
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Asif Mehedi
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Alessandro Cordova
Bocconi University
Marti Mestieri
Northwestern University
Rachel Steinacher
Innovations for Poverty Action
Michael Lenox
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Cher Li
Nottingham University Business School