Trials

The Impact of Intellectual Property Protection on Firm Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial

To what extent does patent protection change product market outcomes?

The granting of patent rights is a central public policy tool to incentivise innovation, but the incentive that patents offer works indirectly. Rather than directly subsidising R&D costs (as in other mechanisms, such as tax credits), or attempting to make up for any differences between the public and private incentives to research, patents provide incentive through product market protection.

Corporate Nudging & Intrapreneurship

Can subtle non-monetary nudges be used to influence intrapreneurial behaviour in a large corporation?

Intrapreneurship, or bottom-up entrepreneurial activities by employees from existing firms, can be an important source of innovation and organisational growth. Management of intrapreneurship, however, is highly complex as it is typically considered discretionary behaviour and is generally not formalised in job descriptions. Innovation competitions is one way to stimulate this type of behaviour within firms

From our blog

Thursday, 19 December 2024

It’s the end of the year again (and yes, as usual it has gone fast!).

Monday, 2 December 2024

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) drive economic growth, innovation, and job creation worldwide

Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the engines of economic growth, driving innovation,

Apply for our Seed Grants!
These grants help researchers explore trial opportunities and gather valuable feedback on trial designs before officially launching their studies
Learn about how organisations are becoming more experimental
Despite the importance of innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship for economic growth, there is still little evidence on how best to create impactful support. We believe that we need a more experimental approach to innovation and growth policy, trialling new instruments but also evaluating them more rigorously. Browse our Trials Database to see what organisations are learning from experimentation!

Our Partners

The Innovation Growth Lab is an international initiative led by Nesta in partnership with several public and private organisations around the world.

Our research network

The IGL Research Network includes over 100 researchers from around the world working on randomised controlled trials related to innovation, high-growth entrepreneurship and growth.

Patricio Dalton
Tilburg University
Diether Beuermann
Inter-American Development Bank
Josh Lerner
Harvard University
Elizabeth Lyons
School of Global Policy & Strategy, UC San Diego
Subrat Rout
Crosslinks Foundation
Donald Sull
MIT Sloan School of Management
Alessandro Maffioli
Inter-American Development Bank
Michael Lenox
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Marco Kleine
Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Ina Ganguli
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Christoph Ihl
Hamburg University of Technology
Albert Bravo-Biosca
Nesta
Viktoria Boss
TUHH Institute of Entrepreneurship
David Pérez-Castrillo
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Alessandro Cordova
Bocconi University
Marte Tobro
University of Oslo