As digital transformation for SMEs become more important than ever, we collaborated with the Inter-American Development Bank to support policymakers in Argentina, Jamaica and Uruguay to apply the experimental approach to their technology adoption programs.
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.
While the academic literature has considered the impact of providing small loans to microenterprises there has been limited work that considers the impacts of providing big loans to small businesses. This IGL funded trial explores if these loans riskier for the lender than standard loans.
In this IGL funded trial, the team at Ideas Foundation look at the impact of tailored consultancy support for SMEs in Venezuela.
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.
Despite the growing awareness of the different approaches and techniques used to improve decision making, there is little scientific understanding of the best approach. In this IGL funded trial, researchers from Bocconi University present their findings from a randomised controlled trial (RCT) into whether adopting a scientific approach improves entrepreneurial decision making and firm performance.
What comes first to mind when we hear the words “technology adoption”? Answers tend to range widely, from a new machine, to a resistant seed variety, to an online payment method, but they rarely include organisational practices. However, besides using new inputs or processes for the production of goods and the delivery of services, we can also improve firm productivity by changing its “management technology”.
Technology adoption is deeply intertwined with growth and productivity: differences in the speed with which technologies diffuse can explain a large share of the differences in wealth between countries.
In the UK, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that established a working relationship with large businesses have suffered the consequences of not getting paid in a timely manner. The scale and threat of late payments is identified as having a draining effect on growth and productivity.
On paper, university-industry partnerships offer great opportunities to both sides, and yet in reality these partnerships are hard to come by. Ferran Giones explains the pilot study they did, funded by the IGL Grants Programme, to try to encourage more.
