Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary What is preventing entrepreneurs and managers from forming peer connections themselves? This paper argues that entrepreneurs may be under-networked because they lack the necessary social skills that allow them to match efficiently with knowledgeable peers. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Recent field experiments demonstrate that advice, mentorship, and feedback from randomly assigned peers improve entrepreneurial performance. These results raise a natural question: what is preventing entrepreneurs and managers from forming these peer connections themselves? We argue that entrepreneurs may be under-networked because they lack the necessary social skills—the ability to communicate effectively and interact collaboratively with new acquaintances—that allow them to match efficiently with knowledgeable peers. We use a field experiment in the context of a business training program to test if a short social skills training module improves who the participants choose to learn from within the program. We find that entrepreneurs who were exposed to the social skills training formed 50% more relationships with peers. These relationships exhibited more matching based on managerial skill and were more ethnically diverse. Finally, the training also substantially increased entrepreneurs’ business performance. Our findings suggest that social skills help entrepreneurs build relationships that create value for both themselves and their peers. <br /> </p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6357/1287.full Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Does improving the communication practices of entrepreneurs have effects on their perceptions of and engagement in interactions and influence their business performance? Sample Trial population and sample selection Entrepreneurs that have been operating a business for at least one year. The majority are men (64%). Participants are keen to grow their businesses and willing to pay a small participation fee. Participants’ businesses have been operating for an average of eleven years and have on average 1 to 2 employees. Average revenue is about USD 300 per month and average monthly profits approximately USD 100. In terms of best practices, entrepreneurs’ businesses on average used about 60% of the practices defined by the World Bank for small businesses. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Half of the participants begin the two-day training program with a two-hour introductory session on social skills in business: -Interpersonal interactions: 20-minute presentation about what interpersonal interactions entail, what steps are involved, and which interactions are about business and which are not. Collaborative business interactions: a 20-minute discussion about how collaborative interactions involve learning about others by asking them questions about their businesses and using their own experiences and knowledge to give advice. -Effective communication strategies: 20-minutes presentation on good communication strategies including keeping the communication focused on issues related to business, being clear and direct when asking questions or offering a perspective and making sure to ask for contact information, send thank-you notes and follow-up. -Case study: the final hour is dedicated to work through an example of two entrepreneurs interacting, which mimic real situations that entrepreneurs might face. This provides entrepreneurs the opportunity to engage interactively with the content of the session. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method The pre-treatment survey and the two post-treatment surveys (sources 1, 4, and 5) collected information from all participant entrepreneurs about their management practices, networking practices, expenditures, revenues, employees, and other demographic information. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Entrepreneurial communication: sharing information, identifying complementary others, and sustaining communication. Performance outcomes.</p> Results <p>The social skills training makes entrepreneurs perceive peer relationships as more collaborative and help them learn more from conversations with their peers. The social skills training also helps entrepreneurs build larger peer networks (50% more connections six weeks after the training) with more complementary and ethnically diverse peers. These improvements in entrepreneurs' social interactions lead to important improvements in business performance. Monthly profits of businesses owned by entrepreneurs who receive the social skills training increase by approximately 20% within the first year after the programme.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Dimitriadis, S., & Koning, R. , 2022. Social skills improve business performance: evidence from a randomized control trial with entrepreneurs in Togo. Management Science. Citation for use in academic references
