"A professor at Brazil’s prestigious Federal University of Viçosa saw a need on campus for an incubator to support technologically-oriented businesses, including agribusinesses. This resulted in the CENTEV Technology Incubator, which is partially funded by the university but which also receives state and private grants. Its function is to nurture entrepreneurs to develop viable technology based businesses by providing them with management assistance and augmenting their technical capabilities with expert academic advice. The incubator’s 24 graduates are still in business, with average revenues of $2.5 million a year."

"Do business accelerators add value? If so, how? We investigate these questions by focusing on Start-Up Chile, a government-backed ecosystem accelerator. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that entrepreneurship-schooling services of accelerators can significantly increase new venture performance by improving the entrepreneurial capital of participants. We speculate about the existence of four performance-enhancing mechanisms: greater social clout, the provision of an accountability structure that induces entrepreneurs to articulate and reflect about specific strategic tasks, an increase in self-efficacy, and know-how about building a start-up. We find no support for causal effects of basic services of cash and co-working space."

"Management has a large effect on the productivity of medium and large firms. But does management matter in micro and small firms, where the majority of the labor force in developing countries works? We develop 26 questions that measure business practices in marketing, stock-keeping, record-keeping, and financial planning. These questions have been administered in surveys in Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. We show that variation in business practices explains as much of the variation in outcomes-sales, profits, and labor productivity and total factor productivity-in microenterprises as in larger enterprises."

"A large share of the poor in developing countries run small enterprises, often earning low incomes. This paper explores whether the poor performance of businesses can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits, have larger revenues, serve a greater number of clients, are more likely to use formal accounting techniques, and more likely to be registered with the government. Indirect treatment effects on those entrepreneurs randomized out of the program, yet living in treatment villages, are economically meaningful, yet imprecisely measured. We present a simple model of experience and learning that helps interpret our results, and consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that "low-quality" entrepreneurs are the most likely to quit their business post-treatment, and that the positive impacts of the treatment are increasing in entrepreneurial quality."

"The study (i) reviews the definitions and concepts of social enterprises, (ii) outlines the landscape across 10 selected countries in Asia and Latin America, (iii) discusses challenges to scaling as faced by social enterprises, and (iv) presents suggestions for development banks to extend support to social enterprises through public and private sector investments. The study categorizes social enterprises and argues that the comparative advantage of development banks is to support selected social enterprises that are commercially bankable and have the base of the pyramid (BOP) at the core of their business operations. Development banks can support these enterprises-considered as the inclusive businesses of the future-through investing in impact funds and/or public sector loans."

"SMEs are positioning themselves as a strategic branch of banking operations in the region, while banks are increasingly pushing for more active policies when it comes to the financing of SMEs. This is one of the highlighted conclusions from a 2011 joint survey conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank Group's entities dealing with the private sector: the Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN), the beyond Banking program of the department of Corporate and Structured Financing (SCF), and the Inter-American Investment Corporation, along with the Latin American Banking Federation (FELABAN).
This report introduces the general results obtained during the fourth survey encompassing the views and opinions of directors, managers and deputies of the SME division of 109 banks scattered across 22 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also includes an itemized analysis of the answers divided by the banks size and location, as well as their interrelations with other trends in that sector."

"This introductory guide is aimed at entrepreneurs and investors who are new to the process of negotiating term sheets. It is not meant to provide legal advice; instead, it is designed to provide examples of certain common provisions that are not always easy to grasp.

This guide is a thorough summary of the options for setting up a business in Mexico including the governance clauses and the differences between legal structures. It covers third party investments to raise capitals, and explains the concepts of impact investment, capital instruments and key economic terms."

"The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of one productive development program (PROPYME) in a developing nation like Costa Rica. This program seeks to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) to innovate. Impacts have been estimated assuming that beneficiary firms are trying to maximize their profits and that PROPYME aims to increase these firms productivity. The impacts were measured in terms of three result variables real average wages employment demand and the probability of exporting. A combination of fixed effects and propensity score matching techniques was used in estimations to correct for any selection bias. The authors worked with panel data companies treated and untreated for the period 2001-2011. PROPYME's beneficiaries performed better than other firms in terms of labor demand and their probability of exporting. In addition, the dose and the duration of the effects of the treatment (timing effects) are important."

"This guide provides useful insights and recommendations for any entrepreneur support provider committed to connecting entrepreneurs to knowledge, networks, expertise, and capital along all stages of venture development. Accelerators, incubators, mentorship networks, and other intermediaries supporting entrepreneurs from idea to scale will find useful insights and recommendations to make their programs more accessible to women entrepreneurs."

"The first part of this guide, “Barriers to Female Entrepreneurship in Latin America”, provides a foundation by outlining the challenges that women entrepreneurs face in Latin America and how their attitudes, motivations, and entrepreneurial setup and outcomes differ from men.

The second part of the guide, “Gender Lens Acceleration”, explores the differences between women and men entrepreneurs in acceleration, and the challenges women entrepreneurs face in accessing acceleration support. A gender lens is then applied to the acceleration process, covering program set-up and design, promotion, scouting and application, selection of participants, and program delivery. Each phase of the process is broken down into an overview of how gender manifests, and recommendations and best practices that accelerators can apply to make their programs’ processes gender inclusive. The guide ends with gender lens measurement in acceleration."