"Tech start-ups are an effective mechanism to both create local technology and absorb foreign technology. The objective of this report is to provide a better understanding of the status of Beirut's start-up ecosystem and provide policy recommendations for policy makers and other stakeholders who are interested in supporting the growth and sustainability of the ecosystem. The report is based on an in-depth survey of startups and supportive stakeholders of the ecosystem. The findings point out to an early-to middle stage start-up ecosystem that has passed its nascent growth phase but is still far from maturity. Skills, supportive infrastructure, finance pipeline, and community and networks are examined and gaps are identified. Policy recommendations to tackle these gaps are presented based on international practices."

"The purpose of this study is to explore how do the characteristics of technology business incubators (TBIs), their chief executive officers, selection process and incubation process influence their research and development (R&D) contributions to the national economy.

These research questions are probed based on primary data gathered from 65 TBIs located in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, 3 of the leading start-up hubs of India comprising 9 accelerators, 31 incubators and 25 co-working spaces. Stepwise (backward elimination) regression method has been applied for six regression models for the analysis of research objectives."

"This paper studies the impact on well-being and business outcomes from teaching stress-management practices to small firm owners in Bangladesh. Female owners were randomly assigned either to a treatment group that received a 10-week Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) course featuring priority-setting and relaxation techniques, or to a control group exposed to Empathic Listening. CBT leads to large initial reductions in owner stress, but no initial increase in firm profits. Six months after receiving CBT, owners in sectors with a low concentration of women show large and significant effects on stress, and their firms show increased profits. By contrast, owners in female-dominated sectors experience a short-lived reduction in stress, and firms show no changes in profits. The large post-treatment differences in well-being and profits between industries suggest that the ability to manage stress is malleable, and that industry choice proxies for traits that are strongly correlated with returns to training."

"The mobilization of social resources for addressing urgent societal needs under market assumptions is a major component of the strategy for development. Social enterprises as an alternative source of public goods and services attract the attention of academics, practitioners and policy-makers to the efficient use of entrepreneurial resources. Initially this study aims to provide a more systematic understanding about the factors that affect the probabilities of success of socially oriented undertakings and contributes to the literature by answering the call for more empirical research about such effects over their performance. Using a logistic regression model on data from a sample of socially oriented ventures in 148 countries participating in the 2013-2016 Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, the positive effects of such factors were first validated. At a later stage, this quest attempted to find differential behaviors of these effects by comparing operations in OECD and developing countries. No conclusive evidence for dissimilarities between groups was found. This result could be partially attributed to the accelerator´s selection processes favoring companies with a proven record. Important global policy implications are drawn in support of harmonized social-entrepreneurship promotion programs and the adoption of standardized impact measurement criteria. This argument raises ample academic and practical possibilities for investigating the impact of socio-economic and cultural influences on the efficacy of social enterprise´s interventions. After controlling for the efficient use of entrepreneurial resources, teams made-up of civil society organizations, businesses and government institutions can allocate their attention to those country-specific situations affecting the efficacy of development programs such as the problems to be solved, the particularity of the eco-systems and the adequacy of the organizational arrays adopted."

"This report outlines the key characteristics, influencing environment and needs of women-owned businesses in order to support investors and technical assistance providers in Africa to adopt a gender lens within their current practices and policies. The paper summarizes the findings from primary field research conducted in three areas: technical and business support, financial support, and gender specific considerations. The report also includes considerations for investors and technical assistance or business service providers when adopting a gender lens with their current practices and policies within the three areas. "

"This document presents ENERGIA’s four-year journey to create and upscale womencentric energy enterprises that sell safe, reliable and affordable energy solutions to low-income consumers in underserved areas. ENERGIA works with partner organizations in seven countries in an effort to develop and test new, disruptive business models and approaches that promote women as energy entrepreneurs. This document is a self-reflection, undertaken collectively by the WEE programme coordinator, the partner organizations and the ENERGIA International Secretariat. As a learning document, it seeks to analyse the various strategies with which we have worked in different contexts. It draws out common features of the most promising ones, as well as lessons from efforts that did not go so well, or even failed completely. Since documentation on women’s energy entrepreneurship is only beginning to emerge, wherever relevant, we have crosschecked our lessons with those from women’s entrepreneurship in other sectors."

"This paper provides a review of the profiles of the subsistence entrepreneurs and their constraints, and the landscape of current entrepreneurship programs and the evidence on impacts, and discusses the potential role of public policies for the livelihoods of subsistence entrepreneurs. Worldwide over a half of workers are self-employed, but a significant fraction of these self-employed jobs are of low productivity subsistence entrepreneurs. The focus of the entrepreneurship programs to support these self-employed in poverty is to improve their livelihoods rather than promoting cutting-edge innovation and business growth. Evidence of successful programs is limited and program designs often seem ill suited to the needs and characteristics of these subsistence entrepreneurs. Given the market failures faced by subsistence entrepreneurs, interventions that complement safety net programs with well-targeted support to promote productive self-employment may hold some promise."

"This research is unique as it is one of few studies that looks at women entrepreneurs from a regional perspective, to assess similarities and differences in how women entrepreneurs are coping with financial and non-financial barriers to growth in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda respectively. The study also establishes how these women currently fund their businesses, explores attitudes to different types of financing to expand their enterprises and reveals the funding gaps and capacity building needs."

"How do established companies respond to the entry of hybrid social ventures in their industries? Hybrid social ventures-new companies that combine business and social missions-use sustainability-oriented strategies to compete with established companies for some of their most desirable customers and employees. Yet hybrid social ventures also benefit when established companies advance their own sustainability strategies. This unusual competitive dynamic creates opportunities for collaboration. This article presents a framework for established companies responding to hybrid social ventures based on analysis of eight established consumer-facing companies. Our findings suggest that the responses of established companies differ based on opportunities they perceive for sustainability-oriented value creation with their own customers and employees."

"As part of its Agribusiness Innovation Program (AIP), infoDev designed an agribusiness incubation training program. To-date, the Agribusiness Incubation Training has been provided to a total of 149 people from 25 countries, including countries from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. This report analyzes the effects of the delivery of this training. The agribusiness incubation training sessions took place as a one-day-training1 in the context of seven different events."