iNNpulsa Evidence Use and Generation Accelerator

Team

Sara Garcia Arteagoitia

Sara García Arteagoitia joined IGL as a Senior Researcher in 2022. In her role, she helps identify experimental research opportunities with our global government partners and bring them to fruition.

Before joining IGL, Sara worked as a consultant and instructor in behavioural design with private companies and government agencies in Spain and Latin America, helping them improve their structures and programmes to achieve higher impact. Prior to that, she was the Senior Assistant Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago, where she worked on developing partnerships and research structures to propel and promulgate experimental behavioural research.

She started her career in experimental research as a research assistant for different projects at the University of Chicago and the Max-Planck Institute for Collective Goods. Sara holds a BA in Political Science and a MA in Political Psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

David Ampudia

David is a Senior Data Scientist at the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

His role at the Lab focuses on helping grow the team’s capability for using data analysis and statistics to uncover and pursue opportunities to improve the effectiveness and equity of innovation and business policy.

Prior to joining the IGL in 2022, David worked as a Research Fellow at the Data Center of the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE). His work involved the development of state-of-the-art sequential decision-making algorithms, with a particular focus on Bayesian Optimization and multi-armed bandits. He also contributed to multiple political economy projects, helping develop and implement improved methodologies using novel data sources and techniques. As a member of the Center, David has taught text-based deep learning courses at the Summer School of the BSE for several years now. Before this, David worked as an economic consultant for FocusEconomics, a macroeconomic research and forecasting institute.

David holds a one-year MSc in Data Science Methodology from the Barcelona School of Economics, and a two-year MRes in Analysis and Policy in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. He also has a BA in International Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

James Phipps

James is Deputy Director at the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

Since joining IGL in 2016, James has overseen efforts to encourage policymakers to apply an experimental approach within innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth policy. He has worked with government ministries and innovation agencies around the world to develop and evaluate new ideas.

Notable projects include BEIS’s Business Basics Fund, where James was pivotal to the experimental approach that was used to test and explore many different ways of encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to take up productivity-boosting ways of working and technology.

Before joining Nesta, James was Head of Enterprise Policy Development and Evaluation at the UK Business Department, where he led research into the rationale and effectiveness of public support for entrepreneurship and business growth. He was also instrumental in the department becoming more experimental and rigorous in its evaluation, which included a range of policy experiments from small messaging trials through to the £30m Growth Vouchers Programme.

Edoardo Trimarchi

Edoardo Trimarchi is Policy Lead for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

In this role, Edoardo contributes to the development and growth of IGL’s programme of work to create more experimental policy ecosystems.

Before joining IGL in 2022, Edoardo was the Senior Policy Manager of the Abdul Latif Jameel Policy Action Lab (J-PAL) office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. For three years he led J-PAL LAC’s policy team in identifying opportunities to promote the use of evidence in policy making, built partnerships with governments, donors and civil society organisations across the region, and provided technical assistance for the scale-up and replication of successful interventions. He joined J-PAL LAC in 2017 as a Senior Research Associate working on a White Paper on youth crime and violence prevention in Mexico. Previously, he worked in Colombia with J-PAL LAC and Innovations for Poverty Action on a project for the institutionalisation of evidence use within the Monitoring and Public Policy Evaluation Unit of Colombia's National Department of Planning.

Edoardo also conducted field research in Bolivia and Colombia, and interned at the Democratic Governance Unit of the United Nations Development Programme in the Dominican Republic. Edoardo has an MSc in Sustainable Development - International Development from Utrecht University and a BA in Economics from Bocconi University.

Wanda Maria Mollica

Wanda is Research and Policy Engagement Coordinator at the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

In her role, she is responsible for enhancing IGL's outreach, communications, and engagement offer. She also provides project management support across various IGL projects.

Prior to joining IGL, she worked as Deputy Editor for a human rights journal and as Officer in a Sustainability team. She also has experience working with NGOs and Think Tanks to help grassroots organisations spread awareness and devise strategies for current socioeconomic issues. She holds a BA in International Development from King’s College London and an MSc in International Social and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.

Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of economic growth, yet ensuring that business development support (BDS) programs effectively help these businesses thrive remains a challenge. iNNpulsa, Colombia’s National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Agency, is tackling this challenge through ZASCA, a flagship program aimed at providing tailored support to over 16,000 SMEs nationwide.

IGL is partnering with iNNpulsa to strengthen ZASCA’s effectiveness by embedding data-driven insights and experimental approaches into its design and implementation. Funded by the Argidius Foundation, this project will also leverage the SCALE framework, a toolkit that identifies evidence-based practices proven to boost SME growth and job creation. Over the course of 18 months, IGL and iNNpulsa will collaborate on ideation rounds, evidence and data sprints, and capacity-building initiatives to identify opportunities for improvement and pilot innovative solutions.

This partnership represents a unique opportunity to enhance SME support programs in Colombia while offering lessons for similar efforts worldwide. By generating actionable insights, fostering a culture of evidence-based policymaking, and building iNNpulsa’s capabilities, the project aims to deliver tangible benefits to SMEs and contribute to global conversations on effective BDS strategies.

Partners

https://www.innpulsacolombia.com/

Resources

Blog: Building better SME support through data and evidence use