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.
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.
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.
In this blog, we explore how public sector organisations can become more inclusive employers.
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.
Policymakers and business support organisations can use a diverse set of tools to create thriving entrepreneurship ecosystems, ranging from financial support, mentoring to business training. But how can they choose the most effective ones? Charlotte Reypens explores.
This IGL grant funded trial looks at the effects of university led policies to encourage graduate participation in entrepreneurial activity through an RCT at the University of Bologna.
Despite the importance of entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to economic growth, very little policy supporting the growth of these industries is subjected to rigorous evaluation. This blog from the London School of Economic Capstone project seeks to explore why.
IGL grantees present their final findings from an RCT into the impact of soft-skill business training programmes on microentrepreneurs.
