Blog

Read the latest blogs from the IGL network.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

How can funders enable business support providers to experiment?

By Doug Scott, Cavendish Enterprise on Wednesday, 17 February 2021.

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.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Looking behind the scenes of a business support RCT

By Doug Scott, Cavendish Enterprise on Tuesday, 16 February 2021.

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.

Spotlights photo by Mason Summers on Unsplash

Spotlight: Calling all job market candidates

By Eszter Czibor on Tuesday, 24 November 2020.

The academic job market for economists is different this year: interviews will be conducted online, fly-outs are likely to be virtual, and many departments have postponed their hiring altogether because of the pandemic. At the Innovation Growth Lab, we want to do our part and use our platforms to showcase job market papers related to our fields of work.

Using experimental evidence for policymaking: comparative analysis of results obtained from experimental and non-experimental methods in the IEG field

By Matias Grau Veloso; Hans Frech La Rosa; Lucia Perez Alfaro; Francisca Rabanales; Kathryn Reberg on Thursday, 1 October 2020.

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.

What the Horizon 2020 Innosup programme can teach us about RCTs: The lessons

By Stella Ishack on Monday, 14 September 2020.

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.

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