"Small businesses are often believed to serve as engines for innovation, employment and social mobility, due to their flexibility in responding to new opportunities and their potential for rapid growth. In developing countries, SMEs make up a particularly large part of the economy, yet data suggests that very few small enterprises in developing countries grow into larger businesses. Researchers conducted a qualitative study of a consulting program in the Philippines designed to help SMEs expand, investigating the obstacles that consultants identified as constraints to firm growth. They found that there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to business training - most firms have a complex, interconnected set of challenges."

"Resources to validate new sanitation technologies and prepare for market entry – prerequisites for achieving sustainable, scaled solutions – tend to be quite scarce compared to those available to scale proven solutions. As such, a problematic ‘Pioneer Gap’ exists. This funder landscape seeks to both clarify the ‘Pioneer Gap’ and point readers to potential funding and other resources poised to help fill this problematic gap. Two promising forms of funding are explored in detail: catalytic philanthropy and blended finance leveraging impact investment."

"The report seeks to explore how to improve the scalability and viability of early-stage finance provision, thereby reducing the need for philanthropic capital and subsidies to the local providers of finance and support to early-stage enterprises. To this end, the Dutch Good Growth Fund used a landscape exercise to define and prioritize "archetypes of early-stage finance provision" as the focus of this report.

They discussed their initial findings from the in-depth research with 40 field-builders in a workshop during which participants shared experiences, insights and perspectives, and helped to challenge emerging conclusions and identify key points of attention to address in finalizing the report."

"This report begins to address some of the communications gaps that restrict capital flows into the sustainable forestry market and seeks to uncover opportunities to unlock further investment. Investment in these vehicles is critical, both to the conservation of critical biodiversity and animal habitat and to the ability to deliver a low-carbon or negativeemission future."

"This article addresses the specific role of programs that attempt to help social ventures scale. We utilize combined experience in the Momentum Project from ESADE Business School and the Global Social Benefit Incubator at Santa Clara University, as well as an exploratory study of 40 social incubator and accelerator programs around the world, to frame the issues. We make a comparison among different programs and classify them as social incubators and social accelerators according to targeted social ventures and portfolio of resources offered. We note opportunities for research on social entrepreneurship and discuss relevant issues for both academics and practitioners such as the structure of these programs, the variance of approaches, and the resources needed by social ventures in their scaling processes."

"This report explores evidence and insights from five case studies that have made significant recent progress in addressing the challenge of insuring poor smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the developing world. Evidence from these case studies can inform the ongoing debate about the viability of scaling up index-based insurance for vulnerable smallholder farmers in the developing world. The rapid progress observed in recent years suggests that index insurance has the potential to benefit smallholder farmers at a meaningful scale, and suggests the need to reassess arguments that lack of demand and practical implementation challenges prevent index-based insurance from being a useful tool to reduce rural poverty."

"Our research shows that successful scale-ups in the region generate on average 3.4 times more revenues and 8 times more jobs than other SMEs.
Several countries have recognized the economic value of scale-ups and are developing tailored policies and programs for them. Similar initiatives in the MENA region could have a significant impact. By studying the importance of scale-ups in the context of their local markets, we identified priorities for policymakers to improve their local scale-ups ecosystems across four growth pillars: business fundamentals, business propellers, demand creators, and country readiness. Within these pillars, we have recognized several priority areas, including access to financing, talent, foreign markets, large customers, and regulatory relief. Success also depends on mobilizing an ecosystem of private and public players to orchestrate growth initiatives."

"Enterprises seeking to achieve both impact and financial returns have worked hard for many years to deliver critical goods and services to those living at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). While these efforts have clearly had tremendous impact helping large numbers of very poor people, it remains unclear how deeply down into the BOP we as a field are reaching.

Are these enterprises consistently reaching people living on $8 a day? How about $4, or $2, or less? Given the lack of good data, we really do not know. And yet we need to. In order to understand how to reach deeply down the pyramid, we need to understand who is successfully doing so. In order to know when we should subsidize for-profit enterprises to get them to reach lower, we need a better understanding of the “natural” limits to their current reach.

This report was developed jointly by Monitor Deloitte, the MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Rockefeller Foundation to help provide transparency and guidance to advance the broader field of funding for businesses serving the deep BOP."

"A causa de la crisis provocada por el COVID-19, las expectativas de falla generalizada entre las Micro, Pequeñas y Medianas Empresas (MiPyMEs) en el mundo eran muy altas. Ante este escenario, el capítulo de Centroamérica y México de ANDE, en colaboración con VIVA Idea, Nauta y la alianza de Emprendedores frente al COVID-19, hicieron un esfuerzo para indagar la situación de las MiPyMEs latinoamericanas. Este reporte presenta el escenario tras algunas semanas de haber dado inicio la emergencia sanitaria y especialmente, las medidas de distanciamiento social y un escenario, transcurridos algunos meses, que permite evaluar cuáles han sido los retos más grandes a los que las MiPyMEs se han enfrentado y cuáles son sus necesidades para la construcción de una economía resiliente."

"Produced by Vital Voices Global Partnership in cooperation with IFC and the MENA Businesswomen’s Network, this report surveyed 431 women business owners across 8 economies in the Middle East and North Africa to understand their needs, the critical obstacles they face in accessing finance, and identify real solutions to increase the economic contributions of women-owned SMEs."