Policy Responses to Covid-19 and Registration

Panel session on government agencies responses to COVID-19 (part one)

What can we learn from government agencies’ responses to COVID-19? Looking at early lessons from emergency measures being taken to support businesses and innovators

Sofia Bapna, University of Minnesota
Discussant: Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School

Professional networks are vital for individuals’ career advancement. Research demonstrates, however, that in fields where women are a minority (such as in many STEM fields), they are often disadvantaged in their access to such networks. Using a randomized field experiment at an IT conference, we found that women had worse networking outcomes than men. Relative to men, women met 42% fewer new contacts, spent 48% less time talking to them, and added 25% fewer LinkedIn connections. We theorized that in fields where women are underrepresented (e.g., IT) two networking barriers—search and social—differentially affect men and women. We designed and experimentally tested interventions for reducing these barriers. The search intervention was designed to facilitate locating diverse contacts and information. The social intervention was designed to facilitate helping behavior and connecting across social boundaries. We find that the search intervention increased the number of new contacts women met by 57%, the time they spent talking with them by 90%, the number of LinkedIn connections they added by 29%, and their odds of changing jobs by a factor of 1.6. The social intervention increased the time women spent talking to new contacts by 66%. The interventions did not improve men’s outcomes. Our results show that simple interventions can help women grow their networks and find jobs.

If you missed the webinar – watch the recording online now!

Panel session on government agencies responses to COVID-19 (part two)

What can we learn from government agencies’ responses to COVID-19? The multilateral perspective on early lessons from emergency measures being taken to support businesses and innovators

Around the world, government agencies are experimenting with new ways of supporting businesses and innovators to respond to the immediate effects of COVID-19, and to support longer-term economic recovery. Services are being digitalised and delivered remotely, more flexible forms of financing and other support mechanisms are being offered, and more upfront investments are being made into early stage projects. Alongside the challenges, the pandemic is also providing opportunities for innovation policymakers and delivery agencies to test and learn from new ways of working – but are they putting in place the systems to effectively learn from these experiments? In this session, speakers will share insights from their organisation’s work with governments and data collection, reflecting on some early lessons, discussing the role of international collaboration and any thoughts on medium-term/long-term support measures.

Denis Medvedev, Practice Manager, Firm Capabilities and Innovation, Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation Division, The World Bank Group (US)

Piret Tõnurist, Innovation Lead, OECD (France)

Claudia Suaznabar, Lead Specialist, Competitiveness, Technology and Innovation Division, Inter-American Development Bank (US)

If you missed the webinar – watch the recording online now!