"This report presents lessons learned from various models that public and private sector programs use to stimulate growth of agro-processing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through linkages to larger firms in developing countries. The study considers the unique barriers that SMEs face and the market-driven approaches spurring SME growth by facilitating linkages to lead firms in challenging development contexts which might serve as a reference for policymakers, development practitioners, and private sector actors. The report presents approaches to successful, sustainable program design for public and private sector-led initiatives, in an effort to enrich the knowledge available to expand the opportunities for agro-processing, and to attract lead firms to partner with smaller ones."

"This paper identifies separate and unique pathways to profits among small businesses in South Africa that are exposed to marketing or finance training in a randomized control study. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to firm owners who ex ante have less exposure to different business contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, entrepreneurs who have been running more established businesses prior to training benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills."

"This paper examines the impact of improvements in marketing skills relative to finance skills among small-scale entrepreneurs. It addresses three important questions: (1) What is the impact of marketing or finance skills on business profits? (2) How do improvements in marketing and finance skills respectively affect different business outcomes? (3) When are increases in marketing relative to finance skills more beneficial? Through a randomized control study of 852 firms in South Africa, the analysis finds significant improvements in profitability from both types of business skills training. However, the pathways to achieve these gains differ substantially between the two groups. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to businesses run by entrepreneurs with ex ante less exposure to different market contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, it is the more established businesses that benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills."

"This guide aims to help early-stage innovators develop business models and partnership approaches that align with the development of their product, and envision potential pathways for bringing products to scale. While many concepts and insights in this guide apply to all global health innovations, our focus is on medical devices and products, rather than drugs, commodities, or service-delivery models."

"This is an online resource page centered around performance and outcomes measurement for social enterprises. The resource page includes evaluation and field studies, an overview of SROI analysis, and social costs, among others."

"This dissertation explores the learning of social entrepreneurs in accelerators. Building on Jarvis' (2010) existential theory of learning, it conceptualises entrepreneurial learning as a process in which purposeful individuals encounter and transform experiences of disjuncture. These experiences are embedded in both human and material contexts. Learning processes and outcomes are portrayed as phenomena that are influenced by social entrepreneurs' interaction with these environments. Accelerators are depicted as non-formal contexts of learning, of relatively short duration - in which the structure and content of education is progressively adapted to the requirements of the individual."

"No More Excuses: Responsible Supply Chains in a Globalised World is both timely and extremely interesting. It is a report card on the engagement and commitment of multinational companies (and others in global supply chains) in the mega-challenge of aligning corporate goals and incentives with important economic, social and ethical standards and objectives. It is an honest and objective look, based on a vast amount of survey information across eight economies (China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and the US), each of which has a key role in global supply chains. It is designed to get at the perceptions of corporate leaders, their commitments and achievements to date. And it paints a clear picture of important areas where progress is lagging, or in a few cases, in reversal."

"While business accelerators remain understudied in the academic literature, there is growing interest in understanding how accelerators work and where they provide value to entrepreneurs. In this paper, we focus exactly on this question – we examine how mentorship and investor ties, two key aspects observed across accelerators in general lead to positive accelerator outcomes and through them, to longterm firm success outcomes for the start-ups participating in accelerators. Using the full cohort (n=105) of an international accelerator, we follow the progress of the startups during the accelerated period and continue to follow these startups for 15 months. We find that startups that participate more in mentorship events have higher likelihood of achieving short-term outcomes during the accelerator, such as the release of a prototype and generating revenue for the first time. Similarly, startups that develop more investor ties during the accelerator survive and raise capital at a higher rate. Finally, we find evidence that certain short-term accelerator outcomes also increase the chances of survival and investment. On the basis of these results, we provide practical implications for start-ups as well as managers of accelerator programs, in addition to theoretical contributions to entrepreneurship research."

"NTF4Ag: Emerging Lessons and New Frontiers brings together key results, insights from the case studies, pilots and crosscutting research conducted by MEDA and its partners over the last three years. The report is framed around INNOVATE's four learning themes, which emerged in an iterative manner from the research portfolio along with engagement with key stakeholders through events, conferences, and ongoing dialogue.

This report is aimed at a diverse set of actors in the smallholder finance landscape including the private sector, research organizations, implementing agencies, funders, and policymakers."

"This discussion paper builds on the results of the Conference Financing Global Development - Leveraging Impact Investing for the SDGs hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Berlin on 21st November 2017.

This paper shares the findings of the session. It aims to foster a conversation around impact measurement and management 2.0 and actively integrating impact incentivization in investment processes. The discussion focussed on how to incentivize the impact investing chain - those who provide capital, those who manage it, and those who receive it - to channel their efforts towards high impact SGBs and to provide adequate support for scaling impact."