Training innovation policymakers to adopt more experimentation
Discover how the training programme delivered by IGL helped EURADA agencies to become more experimental.
Blog
Read the latest blogs from the IGL network.
The governance system of Latin American innovation agencies
Innovation agencies are gradually gaining prominence in Latin America and the Caribbean. The issue of the capabilities of these innovation agencies in the region is of great importance and has been notoriously under-researched. Our latest research highlights certain factors that influence the modus operandi of the innovation agencies that form the Latin American Network of Innovation Agencies (RELAI).
Mapping the road ahead for innovation agencies
At IGL we have long been interested in the question of what innovation agencies do, and how they can successfully drive innovation, entrepreneurship and productivity within their societies and economies. Over the past few years, we have explored this topic in depth, building on earlier Nesta research that looked at the different roles and approaches taken by innovation agencies around the world.
The future roles of European innovation agencies must be led by the needs of innovators
Our latest research looks at the changing roles of innovation agencies in Europe. One key take away is that to keep up with the rate of change, be it technological or societal, their identities in the future must be led by the needs of the innovators they look to support.
Building a community of experimental innovation agencies: insights from IGL’s work with TAFTIE
Innovation agencies are responsible for catalysing the development of innovations designed to address unmet societal and economic needs. They fund and support entrepreneurs, companies and other actors to develop, test and scale new products, services and ideas. But how do they ensure that they are continuously learning and innovating themselves?
Three recommendations to improve Spain's Public Policy Evaluation Bill
Spain is on the verge of passing new legislation on policy evaluation. This represents a great opportunity to create the framework that will allow Spain to evaluate its policies and learn more about their impact - but the text is in need of improvement.
Skills training at scale: Evidence on business and labour market outcomes in Tanzania
This IGL Grant funded trial asks how NGOs and governments can improve youth unemployment, especially women’s labour force participation?
Venture growth strategy: How do entrepreneurs spend their time?
This IGL funded study asks how entrepreneurs spend their time on exploration-led or exploitation-led growth strategies? Are there differences in growth strategies across companies with different growth potential or types of founders? Does supporting entrepreneurs in pursuing specific growth strategies affect the returns to the time spent growing their businesses?
How can we promote social innovation among SMEs? The promise of innovation audits
The DepoSIt project – carried out under the European Commission’s INNOSUP-06-2018 programme – involved developing and testing a new support service scheme aimed at increasing the capability of SMEs across Europe to generate business out of social challenges.
Running an RCT with SMEs: Secrets of success
In the last few years, Elena Novelli, Alfonso Gambardella and Arnaldo Camuffo at Bocconi University (and colleagues from other institutions around the world), have been running a series of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to understand the impact on entrepreneurial performance of teaching entrepreneurs to operate like scientists when making decisions.
Four years of the UK’s Business Basics Programme – what have we learned?
The question of how to raise productivity among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has long presented a challenge to policymakers around the world. In 2018, the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) worked with Innovate UK and IGL to launch an innovative approach to this problem, creating a fund to experiment with interventions to boost productivity among SMEs.
Science to perfect the art: Experimental evidence gaps in entrepreneurship and business support
This blog highlights how we have identified a series of topics and questions that policymakers are especially interested in, but where experimental evidence is scarce or nonexistent and the available research is not solid enough to make recommendations about programme design. These open questions encompass exciting and often underexplored research agendas well positioned to both expand the frontier of knowledge and produce policy-relevant research.