"Given the mixed evidence for the impact of various publicly funded initiatives that aim to foster entrepreneurial activity, this paper empirically examines the efficacy of publicly funded business advisory services in relation to entrepreneurial outcomes. Based on a sample of 228 early-stage firms, of which 101 used business advisory services focused on helping companies secure 1st rounds of financing and start generating revenues, we examine the firm-level impact such services can have on sales growth, innovation, finance and alliances. We find services are positively associated with firms' sales growth, patents, finance and alliances. We assess statistical and economic significance, and assess robustness to controls for the non-randomness of the firm's using business advisory service program, as well as endogeneity of advisors' hours spent with firms. Other robustness checks are also included. We find significant robustness of hours spent on sales and finance, but sensitivity of the effect of hours on patents and alliances after controlling for endogeneity."

"This research aims to quantify the importance of a country's entrepreneurship level in terms of its competitiveness rates. Our hypothesis is that those countries entrepreneurship growth rates increase their competitiveness indicators and that this entrepreneurial improvement could be a key factor in reaching the next stage of development. Our results suggest that Latin American countries need to gain entrepreneurial dynamics and economic (and competitiveness) development by transforming their typical self-employment or low value-added new ventures for local markets into strong, innovative networked firms competing globally. Some management and policy implications are also discussed."

"The idea that start-ups and young firms (hereafter entrepreneurial firms) create jobs is very popular among policy-makers and has led to a large number of studies investigating the effect of entrepreneurship on job creation. Recently, however, society and many players in the political arena have begun to care not only about job quantity and quantitative employment levels, but also about the quality of the jobs created. This study provides the first systematic literature review of research on the quantity and quality of jobs created by entrepreneurial firms. The review concludes with policy implications and avenues for future research."

"Enterprises seeking to achieve both impact and financial returns have worked hard for many years to deliver critical goods and services to those living at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). While these efforts have clearly had tremendous impact helping large numbers of very poor people, it remains unclear how deeply down into the BOP we as a field are reaching.

Are these enterprises consistently reaching people living on $8 a day? How about $4, or $2, or less? Given the lack of good data, we really do not know. And yet we need to. In order to understand how to reach deeply down the pyramid, we need to understand who is successfully doing so. In order to know when we should subsidize for-profit enterprises to get them to reach lower, we need a better understanding of the “natural” limits to their current reach.

This report was developed jointly by Monitor Deloitte, the MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Rockefeller Foundation to help provide transparency and guidance to advance the broader field of funding for businesses serving the deep BOP."

"Produced by Vital Voices Global Partnership in cooperation with IFC and the MENA Businesswomen’s Network, this report surveyed 431 women business owners across 8 economies in the Middle East and North Africa to understand their needs, the critical obstacles they face in accessing finance, and identify real solutions to increase the economic contributions of women-owned SMEs."

"This document answers questions through a practical self-assessment tool built from the collective knowledge of practitioners who have been engaged in scaling social businesses. It is a simple checklist that enables practitioners to quickly assess their organization's readiness for scale and to clearly identify areas for improvement in four distinct areas: Social Impact, Financial Viability, Internal Capacity, and External Enablers.

The tool also offers a collection of best practices gathered from the experiences of social enterprises who are presently scaling inclusive business solutions in nutrition, water, health, agriculture, and energy. The best practices are illustrated by concrete lessons learned from these organizations along their scaling journeys."

"In March of 2020, the world was hit by COVID-19, and nearly every country and society around the world is practicing social distancing and placing restrictions on travel and face-to-face interaction. One of the countless impacts of these changes is that nearly all face-to-face research has been temporarily suspended, and many of the organizations conducting this research are exploring shifting some or all of their work to phone-based surveys. We want to help make this transition as seamless as possible and have put together this free guide to help. It captures many of the most important lessons we’ve learned in conducting phone-based surveys since 2014. While it is neither complete nor exhaustive, we hope that it serves as a useful resource to those who need it."

"Smallholder farmers around the globe are facing unstable productivity due to changing climate and weather patterns. The ways in which the private sector supports these farmers to build resilience to climate change and/or engage in efforts to mitigate climate change can have significant impact on the ability for farmers to make a living, the security of supply of smallholder crops, and the reputation of the private sector actors drawing loyalty of end consumers and investors.

As part of an effort to better engage the private sector in climate smart agriculture activities the Learning Community for Supply Chain Resilience, funded by USAID's Feed the Future program and in support of the Alliance for Resilient Coffee (ARC), interviewed 18 coffee companies to better understand how they think about climate risk and climate smart agriculture, the types of activities in which they engage, and the types of climate information they use and/or need. The results of this study are supplemented by results from a case study of Ugandan coffee companies, illustrating how their use of and need for climate information differs at the national level. The results give insight into the types of information that private sector companies are looking for to be able to design and implement effective climate smart agriculture programs. It also yields some insight on information and tools that would facilitate sector-level strategies."

"This paper tests whether demand shocks affect firm dynamics. Ferraz, Finan and Szerman (2015) examine whether firms that win government procurment contracts grow more compared to firms that compete for these contracts but do not win. They assemble a comprehensive data set combining matched employer-employee data for the universe of formal firms in Brazil with the universe of federal government procurement contracts over the period of 2004 to 2010. Exploiting a quasi-experimental design, they find that winning at least one contract in a given quarter increases firm growth by 2.2 percentage points over that quarter, with 93% of the new hires coming from either unemployment or the informal sector. These effects also persist well beyond the length of the contracts. Part of this persistence comes from firms participating and winning more future auctions, as well as penetrating other markets."

"Women play a key role in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where women make up the majority of those who are entrepreneurs. However, a range of impediments render women's businesses less productive and having fewer employees than those owned by men. This new report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa's women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs. The report offers policy makers evidence-based guidance on designing programs to target multiple obstacles and improve the performance of women entrepreneurs."