Read the latest blogs from the IGL network.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What's next in Business Training? In our latest blog post we chart the course for effective policies and necessary research to further use and generate rigorous evidence in the field.
How can outsiders nudge businesses to make better use of digital technologies? This project tested a simple low-cost intervention - providing information about how the performance of their website compared to their peers - and saw companies making clear improvements as a result.
What's next in Business Consulting? In our latest blog post we chart the course for effective policies and necessary research to further use and generate rigorous evidence in the field.
The purpose of this IGL funded study is to shed light on the benefits, or lack thereof, of setting up supervisory structures for entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship is an amazing asset. It accelerates economic growth, promotes innovation, helps advance research and industrial development, develops existing enterprises, and can promote social change. And the good news is that it is not innate; it is an asset that can be taught and encouraged through exposure. The challenge thus lies in finding the most effective way and moment to do so.
Innovation agencies deal with the ‘here and now’ of supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. But they must also be prepared to respond to the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. How might they be able to learn from a future that is not yet written, and use this to inform their strategic planning?
Experimental Notes is a quarterly newsletter bringing you fresh research insights from experiments in innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship.
This blog examines the 200SMEchallenge project, which involved carrying out a UX Challenge and using a randomised controlled trial to evaluate its effects on SMEs’ readiness to implement user-centred design methods. This project was one of 13 funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, INNOSUP-06-2018.
