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Trials

A scientific approach to entrepreneurial experimentation: evidence from a randomised controlled trial

Does a scientific approach to business experimentation affect startups' performance? What is the effect of extending the use of a scientific approach on team validation?

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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.

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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

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A Randomised Control Trial to Identify the Effect of Tech Incubators on Startups

Is there an effect of incubator spaces on the survival of startups and their economic performance? And if so, why?

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From our blog

Four takeaways from the IGL2018 Global Conference

Thursday, 12 July 2018

It’s difficult to summarise all the discussions at IGL2018 in Boston. With over 70 speakers, 10 keynotes and debates, 14 hand-on practical sessions, and participants from more than 20 countries, there was plenty of interesting conversations both on stage and during the breaks.

What are we learning from policy experiments to increase innovation and entrepreneurship?

Friday, 25 May 2018

Over the last four years at the Innovation Growth Lab, we've started learning valuable lessons from experiments about how to best support innovation, entrepreneurship, and business growth.

How replicable is innovation research?

Thursday, 29 November 2018

Evidence-based policy is only as good as the quality of the evidence it is based on.

Save the date - Winter Research Meeting

Our next Winter Research Meeting & PhD Workshop on 12 and 13 December 2018 at Nesta in London, UK.

Experimental innovation and growth policy

Despite the importance of innovation and high-growth entrepeneurship for economic growth, there is still too little evidence on how best to support them. We believe that we need a more experimental approach to innovation and growth policy, trialling new instruments but also evaluating them more rigorously.

Our partners

IGL 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 85 researchers from around the world working on randomised trials related to innovation, high-growth entrepreneurship and growth.