"After hearing of the success of Fundación Chile, the governor of the Mexican state of Jalisco sought to recreate the foundation locally. The result is Fundación Jalisco, which seeks to import successful business models to small farmers in Jalisco. For its first project, the Fundación imported high-yield blueberry plants from the United States, started a nursery, and gave the plants to local farmers who were capable of growing them successfully. The farmers deliver their berry harvest to the foundation, which packages and sells it throughout Mexico and overseas in the United States and the United Kingdom. The venture has been highly profitable for all concerned, and the foundation is now seeking to diversify into value-added products such as olive oil and cheese. The foundation relies on a combination of state funding and private investment."
"This paper analyzes the kind of knowledge that facilitates hatching and leveraging of technologies through the incubation process. Four corporate incubator types can be distinguished according to their source and type of technology: fast-profit incubators, market incubators, leveraging incubators, and in-sourcing incubators. Applying the knowledge-based view of the firm, four modes of mainly tacit knowledge were identified in respect to the different incubator types: (1) entrepreneurial knowledge, (2) organizational knowledge, (3) technological knowledge, and (4) complementary market knowledge. Knowledge strategies include both the leveraging of internal knowledge as well as the in-sourcing of external knowledge for the firm through the corporate incubator. The research is based on an analysis of a European Commission dataset from a benchmarking survey of 77 incubators as well as 52 interviews in 25 large technology-driven corporations in Europe and the United States."
"The global drive to provide universal access to sustainable and modern energy by 2030 is creating numerous opportunities for energy users and suppliers. However, men and women do not benefit equally from these opportunities. As users, they have different energy needs linked to their different gender roles. Gender blindness in the sector has led to women's needs often being ignored. As suppliers, the energy sector has traditionally been male dominated. Despite stark gender differences in the energy sector, there has been a lack of evidence to inform more equitable policymaking. This issue of the IDS Bulletin aims to fill some of these evidence gaps through five original papers, part of ENERGIA's Gender and Energy Research Programme. The issue pays particular attention to women's involvement in the supply chain as energy entrepreneurs, an emerging area of research in the gender and energy space."
"This issue brief, part of a series published by ANDE in 2019, is designed to create a common knowledge base from which the Small and Growing Business (SGB) sector can work in the hopes of advancing towards selected development goals. Based off the assertion that leaving behind half of the world's population would make achieving the SDGs impossible, current literature and sector experience suggest that the SGB sector can contribute to SDG 5 through three categories of action: Promoting investments and support services for women-led SGBs, improving gender-inclusive employment policies, and scaling gender-focused business models through SGBs."
"We have therefore launched a study on this subject that combines quantitative analyses and qualitative comments of our entrepreneurial companies and partners, their employees, and our investment teams. This research has allowed us to capitalize on our knowledge and to provide an overall picture of what the path to formalization looks like. We do hope, of course, that this study will inspire African governments, development agencies and scholars. But the most valuable part of this work relates to what is very rarely analyzed and even less frequently shared: the practical challenges companies face as they progress towards formalization. Our business gives us access to unique knowledge and insights which are essential to understanding how companies and their employees view public policies, as well as best practices for leading a business towards successful formalization. This study will therefore be of interest to entrepreneurs engaging in the formalization process, as well as to private and public investors who face the challenges of exiting the informal sector."
"Entrepreneurs play a critical role in cities and nations as they create new jobs, generate economic growth, and spread the
development of new innovations. When local entrepreneurship communities are productive, their cities and regions are more
likely to thrive, but when entrepreneurship communities struggle, cities and regions can become trapped in decline.The following pages will share five critical lessons on entrepreneurship communities and productivity. They will also offer practical recommendations that decision makers can use to implement Entrepreneur-Led Economic Development in cities across the world."
"This report proposes actions that can be taken by ASEAN Governments and key stakeholders to address the constraints facing women entrepreneurs. Two key levers for change are highlighted. These are greater access to and use of innovative technologies, especially those made available through the ICT revolution; and creative approaches to making finance and credit available to women entrepreneurs. As well as being critical in their own right, these two levers also contribute to unlocking progress in other key areas, such as education and training, access to business support and networks and opening market opportunities."
"Does the lack of peers contribute to the observed gender gap in entrepreneurial success? A random sample of customers of India's largest women's bank was offered two days of business counseling, and a random subsample was invited to attend with a friend. The intervention significantly increased participants' business activity, but only if they were trained with a friend. Those trained with a friend were more likely to have taken out business loans, were less likely to be housewives, and reported increased business activity and higher household income, with stronger impacts among women subject to social norms that restrict female mobility."
"This report has focused on developing an in-depth, demand-side understanding of the needs and challenges facing inclusive businesses, rather than on studying the drivers and constraints of grantmakers and investors. However, we acknowledge that the latter is a valuable area for further study and action going forward.
The key themes discussed here are based on the sum of Monitor's extensive research into more than 700 inclusive businesses in Africa and India, and Acumen Fund's decade of experience as a pioneering impact investor. They also draw together the experiences and observations of dozens of impact investors, grant funders, academics and other experts."
"From Ideas to Practice, Pilots to Strategy is the second publication in the Forum's Mainstreaming Impact Investing Initiative. The report takes a deeper look at why and how asset owners began to include impact investing in their portfolios and continue to do so today, and how they overcame operational and cultural constraints affecting capital flow. Given that impact investing expertise is spread among dozens if not hundreds of practitioners and academics, the report is a curation of some -but certainly not all -of those leading voices. The 15 articles are meant to provide investors, intermediaries and policy-makers with actionable insights on how to incorporate impact investing into their work."