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.

Andrew King
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Guido Buenstorf
University of Kassel
Nicolai Foss
Bocconi University
Igor Asanov
University of Kassel
Laura Rosendahl Huber
Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers
KU Leuven
Cher Li
Nottingham University Business School
Alessandro Maffioli
Inter-American Development Bank
Olmo Silva
LSE
Marco Kleine
Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Howard Haines
Quatere
Heidi Williams
Stanford University
Edgar Kausel
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Sheen S. Levine
University of Texas
Tim Schweisfurth
University of Twente
Dean Karlan
Northwestern University