“Challenge everything” – A challenge prize centre embraces experimentation
IGL’s researchers teamed up with Nesta Challenges to find out how randomised experiments can improve the way we identify the best solutions to tough societal challenges.
IGL’s researchers teamed up with Nesta Challenges to find out how randomised experiments can improve the way we identify the best solutions to tough societal challenges.
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.
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.
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.
Christina Ungerer from the IST institute at Constance University of Applied Sciences explores the hidden traps of RCTs after their IGL-funded trial into business coaching.
Part two of our two-part blog series on the insights gained from innovation agencies designing new or improved policy schemes supporting SME innovation, and testing these using randomised controlled trials (RCTs). We share what can be taken away for future innovation policy when evaluating business support programmes.
In this post, we summarise some challenges that innovation agencies have faced when designing new or improved policy schemes supporting SME innovation, and testing these using randomised controlled trials (RCTs). We share what does and doesn’t work for future innovation policy when evaluating business support programmes.
This blog, by guest bloggers Theo Roelandt and Henry van der Wiel, outlines the Dutch innovation vouchers trial and its implications for innovation policy.
After the Winter Research Meeting in November, we’re highlighting the people behind the research - understanding the motivations for their work, the effect their research has on the wider world, and further research questions which have come to light over the course of their research. Part one is with Jean Joohyun Oh of Columbia Business School.
By now you should have gathered that at IGL we believe innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth policy would benefit from being more experimental. It will also therefore not be a surprise that this is a common theme at IGL conferences, with sessions each year showcasing policy relevant experiments and workshops that build awareness and knowledge of experimental approaches.