"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 piece distills critical lessons that cut across geographies and sectors and provides vital information for enterprises and funders trying to unlock impact at scale. Pivoting to Impact builds on in-depth Case Studies that share the scaling journeys of three organizations that have completed their IIA-funded work. Each organization has a unique story to tell about its strategies, pivots, successes, and failures on the road to scale."

"We study the information-gathering role of a startup accelerator and consider the accelerator's incentives to choose a portfolio size and disclose information about participating ventures. We show that in a rational-expectations equilibrium, the resultant portfolio size is smaller than the first-best (efficient) level, consistent with some real-world observations. We further show that when some signals are uninformative and the portfolio consists of mostly high-quality ventures, the accelerator may choose to disclose only positive signals (and conceal negative signals) about its portfolio firms - a strategy we refer to as partial disclosure. Moreover, coupled with pursuing this strategy of partial disclosure, we demonstrate that the accelerator may possess incentives to exit its portfolio firms early."

"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."

"Esta publicación busca identificar y presentar las oportunidades de los Negocios Inclusivos como vehículo para acelerar el logro de los ODS por parte del sector privado, como agentes de cambio hacia el desarrollo sostenible en Colombia.

El documento hace parte de una serie de reportes desarrollados por la plataforma global Business Call to Action -BCtA, junto con socios locales en Colombia, Filipinas y Kenia para resaltar el potencial de mercado y de alineación con los ODS que los negocios Inclusivos tienen en diversos sectores."

"Em maio de 2020, a ANDE divulgou um estudo setorial, resumindo as evidências iniciais da primeira fase da crise, em março e abril de 2020, sobre o impacto do COVID-19 nas SGBs e no setor de suporte à SGB de maneira mais ampla nos mercados emergentes.

À medida em que a crise e seus efeitos no setor continuam se desenvolvendo, a ANDE está trabalhando para continuar atualizando as informações com novos dados e insights. Este adendo ao estudo apresenta novos dados coletados dos membros da ANDE, entre maio e junho de 2020, em relação às suas necessidades, ações que estão tomando e impressões atualizadas do impacto que a crise está tendo e terá no setor."

"Este estudo resume as evidências iniciais que surgiram durante a primeira fase da crise, em março e abril de 2020, em relação ao impacto da COVID-19 nas SGBs e no setor de apoio às SGBs nos mercados emergentes. Ele resume os riscos, impactos e necessidades atuais para que as organizações e indivíduos que apoiam as SGBs possam entender melhor o que está acontecendo localmente e, mais importante, tomar medidas para projetar e implementar intervenções mais eficazes."

"This book summarizes five years of learning from data collected as part of the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative. The authors present data describing impact-oriented ventures and accelerators that operate in both high-income countries and in emerging markets. Blending survey data with insights from sector experts, their various analyses shed light on the basic structure of accelerators, showing where they are having their most promising results.

Unlike previous studies, this book does not focus on a few high-profile accelerators (like TechStars and Y Combinator) and startups (like AirBnB and Uber). Instead, it compares a range of accelerator programs that target specific impact areas, challenging regions, and marginalized entrepreneurs. Therefore, it serves as a valuable tool for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the effectiveness of accelerator programs as tools that unleash the economic potential currently trapped in entrepreneurial dead spaces."