"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."

"In recent years, there has been growing interest and funding dedicated to technical assistance (TA) designed to strengthen the commercial and development impact of businesses in developing markets. However, relatively little is known about the nature and effectiveness of these initiatives. To help address that knowledge gap, this paper focuses on efforts by development finance institutions (DFIs) to provide technical assistance to agribusinesses, which—while comprising only a small share of overall DFI investment portfolios—receive 30% of all TA."

"What keeps social entrepreneurs in developing countries from growing their ventures? Around the world social entrepreneurs are creating innovative businesses that reduce poverty and improve the lives of their customers. These pioneers often encounter many hurdles along the way that make growing a social business a significant challenge. With insights from more than 120 interviews with early-stage social entrepreneurs in developing countries, we explore the common financial and non-financial obstacles they face. The survey showed that access to financing is still a major issue for most of the entrepreneurs: loans are expensive, require significant personal collateral and traditional financing providers don’t take the social mission of the business into account. Besides access to capital, especially in the missing middle, social entrepreneurs also have challenges finding new customers for their products and services, managing their operations and technical excellence, as well as recruiting and retaining high quality staff. Based on our findings we distilled specific conclusions and recommendations for entrepreneurs, investors and intermediaries."

"This Roadmap for the Small and Growing Business (SGB) Sector outlines the expected transformations in the sector over the next ten years, and the challenges and opportunities inherent to such change. It includes a set of 13 recommendations that, if adopted, can help sector support organizations focus resources, initiate momentum-building, "catalytic" actions, and mitigate inherent challenges from both within and outside the sector."

"Both private and public entities could benefit from viewing social enterprise development not only as a responsibility but as a financially or strategically valuable investment. Based on this concept, the United Nations Global Compact and The Rockefeller Foundation seek to encourage investors, corporations and policymakers to explore the potential of social enterprise. They have therefore developed this “Framework for Action” to enable the exploration process. The facets of the Framework are presented through a strategic (and often market-focused) lens, but it is important to note that the philosophy of corporate sustainability – defined as a company’s delivery of long-term value in financial, social, environmental and ethical terms – fundamentally underpins the content. The scope of a discussion centered."

"SPF and Dalberg Advisors have collaborated to complete a research report using country level data and expert interviews to understand the critical gender gaps and entrepreneurial solutions to advance the lives of women in Southeast Asia. The study outlines a framework that captures economic empowerment, personal safety and mobility, formal representation, education, health, time and decision-making as seven mutually reinforcing dimensions that are critical to women’s empowerment in Southeast Asia."

"Despite mounting interest in growth mindset interventions, this approach has yet to be applied to the domain of entrepreneurship. In the present research, we developed and tested if a growth mindset intervention could be leveraged to promote students' entrepreneurial self-efficacy and if this, in turn, predicted career development (i.e., academic interest, career interest, task persistence, and academic performance). We report on our findings, from an Open Science Framework (OSF) preregistered study, that is a randomized controlled trial implementing a growth mindset intervention. We randomly assigned undergraduate students (N = 238) in an introduction to entrepreneurship class to either the growth mindset intervention or to a knowledge-based attention-matched control. Students in the growth mindset intervention, relative to the control, reported greater entrepreneurial self-efficacy and task persistence on their main class project. The intervention also indirectly improved academic and career interest via entrepreneurial self-efficacy. However, the intervention failed to directly or indirectly impact performance on a classroom assignment. Additionally, and somewhat surprisingly, gender and past experience in the field failed to moderate any effects of the intervention on outcomes. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed."

"The Guide to SROI provides a clear framework for anyone interested in measuring, managing and accounting for social value or social impact. This Guide was originally written in 2009 by the UK Cabinet Office. Updated in 2012, it is the result of consultation with practitioners, members, academics and others with an interest in social and environmental value and impact measurement."