Blog

Read the latest blogs from the IGL network.

Managerial or entrepreneurial capital? Untangling constraints of innovative entrepreneurs

By Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe, Michael Leatherbee, Santiago Reyes Ortega, Gustavo Rios on Friday, 10 September 2021.

Entrepreneurial support programs have been implemented over the last few decades to foster innovative entrepreneurs in developed and developing countries. Usually, these programs are carried out by local business accelerators that provides cash and support services in terms of training, mentorship, access to contacts and more. While there is some evidence that these type of interventions can foster innovative entrepreneurs, it is still unknown what are the mechanisms that drive the ventures’ growth.

Entrepreneurship and business support: What are the knowledge gaps?

By Anna Segura Lladó & Lou-Davina Stouffs on Tuesday, 10 August 2021.

As part of an IGL project, supported by the Kauffman Foundation, we aim to create a series of evidence summaries that make it easier for policymakers and business support providers to access and act on the most rigorous evidence to support entrepreneurs and businesses. This blog explores our findings so far, as well as launching an open call for inputs from any organisation in the business support ecosystem to contribute to shaping this project.

KEPA: A tale of piloting, exploring and scaling

By Stella Ishack on Thursday, 5 August 2021.

In 2018, the European Commission introduced a new EU Horizon 2020 programme - INNOSUP-06-2018 - to encourage innovation agencies across Europe to experiment with their policy programmes. Here at the Innovation Growth Lab, we’ve been supporting both the EU and innovation agencies to succeed. This piece explores the journey of Anna Koktsidou, a member of Greece’s Business and Cultural Development Centre (KEPA) team, who are currently partaking in the INNOSUP programme.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Four ways public servants can tackle inequality with experimentation

By Nyangala Zolho, Eszter Czibor and Alex Glennie on Tuesday, 23 February 2021.

Public servants have tried to reduce inequality for decades, but it persists. By testing new ideas, gathering information on what works, and looking closely at the impact of interventions, an experimental approach can help improve equality, diversity and inclusion.

Does social entrepreneurship training work? – Only if carefully designed

By Thomas Åstebro & Florian Hoos on Friday, 19 February 2021.

Social entrepreneurship is characterised by a deep commitment to a social cause and the desire to develop new business models with economic, social, and ecological impacts. But can people be trained to become better at social entrepreneurship? HEC Paris Professors Thomas Åstebro and Florian Hoos found that social entrepreneurship training works, but only if carefully designed.

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.

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