"In Mexico, early-stage ventures are becoming a focus for governments and investors that want to spur economic development. Since 2013, venture capital activity has grown, while Mexico City has become a social enterprise and impact investing hub for Latin America. Accelerators play a role in developing a pipeline of investment-ready businesses, but little research has been done on the entrepreneurs attending these programs and how they perform with this specific support. With the support of Citibanamex Compromiso Social, GALI is working to increase our understanding of acceleration and early-stage ventures in Mexico. This report includes application and one-year follow-up information from 318 ventures operating in Mexico, contributed by 15 accelerator programs."

"The Global Accelerator Learning Initiative collects information from entrepreneurs when they apply to accelerator programs. This report summarizes application data collected from ventures operating in Mexico that applied to participating accelerator programs between 2013 and early 2016."

"This data summary provides a snapshot of more than 2,500 early-stage ventures that applied to over 50 acceleration programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, and includes regional insights for East and West Africa and country-specific information for Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria."

"To understand the intermediary role of accelerators in the developing regional entrepreneurial ecosystem of Bangalore, we analyze data from 54 interviews with accelerator graduates, accelerator managers, and other ecosystem stakeholders, and from 49 websites, 13 online video interviews, 26 online news sources and 301 pages of policy documents. Specifically, we adopt a socially-situated entrepreneurial cognition approach to theorize how accelerator expertise, existing at a meso-level, intermediates between (micro-level) founders and the (macro-level). ecosystem. In our model, four types of accelerator expertise-connection, development, coordination, and selection-together increase stakeholders' commitment to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, leading to venture validation (success or failure) and ecosystem additionality. These findings indicate that accelerators contribute to ecosystems in a way that is distinct from, but supportive of, building individual ventures."

"Recent years have seen the rapid emergence of a new type of program aimed at seeding startup companies. These programs, often referred to as accelerators, differ from previously known seed-stage institutions such as incubators and angel groups. While proliferation of such accelerators is evident, evidence on efficacy and role of these programs is scant. Nonetheless, local governments and founders of such programs often cite the motivation for their establishment and funding as the desire to transform their local economies through the establishment of a startup technology cluster in their region. In this paper, we attempt to assess the impact that such programs can have on the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the regions in which they are established, by exploring the effects of accelerators on the availability and provision of seed and early stage venture capital funding in the local region."

"Before making important decisions about allocating resources, organizations need to first identify where a program is, where they want it to be, and how to get it there.To aid this process, we developed a Spectrum of Impact Measurement tool with two axes—level of confidence and level of difficulty—and five stages of impact assessment."

"The manual is targeted specifically at venture philanthropy organisations and social investors ("VPO/SI"), and more generally at impact investors, foundation and any other funders interested in generating a positive impact on society. The first objective of the manual is to create a roadmap or guidebook to help VPO/SIs navigate through the current maze of existing methodologies, databases, tools and metrics on social impact measurement. The second objective is to trigger a movement towards best practice when it comes to measuring and managing impact...The manual should be useful both for beginners in impact measurement, who are considering how to get started, and for more advanced investors who are struggling with how to better integrate an impact focus into everyday investment management decisions."

"Pulling insights from diverse disciplines and the experience of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) affiliated researchers around the world, this guide offers practical tips for overcoming challenges in incorporating women and girls' empowerment measurement in impact evaluations. The guide emphasizes the importance of conducting in-depth formative research to understand gender dynamics in the specific context before starting an evaluation, developing locally tailored indicators to complement internationally standardized ones, and reducing the potential for reporting bias in our instruments and data collection plan."

"Hundreds, if not thousands, of programs exist to help drive business growth in emerging markets. But what does the evidence actually tell us about whether these programs help businesses grow? And what can practitioners learn from this evidence to design more effective interventions? This knowledge synthesis summarizes the current evidence, identifies gaps in the academic research, and proposes a practitioner-oriented research agenda for the sector."

"Business incubation is a growing area attracting substantial interest both from governments and the private sector. Unfortunately, it is difficult for "would-be-entrepreneurs" to operate an informed choice given the large variety in nomenclature, programmes, services offered, underpinning business models, and the frequent lack of availability of performance data, or a common set of metrics that could be used to compute (and provide) widely acceptable KPI useful to facilitate the choice. Additionally, the role of the Information Management System has been under investigated. The present paper presents the research being conducted for the design and implementation of a modular information management system expressly designed to adapt to the needs of business incubators irrespective of the business model and approach adopted. The design is informed of the most relevant different business models presently adopted, the set of services and programmes offered, and the guidelines proposed by the European Union and the CSI federation. Best practices adopted in the UK and Europe have also been considered along with Cabral-Dahab principles. Finally, we identified a set of metrics that can be easily collected and used to generate valuable KPI able to support both the business incubation management as well as the applicants."