"Presenting rigorous and original research, this volume offers key insights into the historical, cultural, social, economic and political forces at play in the creation of world-class ICT innovations in Kenya. Following the arrival of fiber-optic cables in 2009, Digital Kenya examines why the initial entrepreneurial spirit and digital revolution has begun to falter despite support from motivated entrepreneurs, international investors, policy experts and others. Written by engaged scholars and professionals in the field, the book offers 15 eye-opening chapters and 14 one-on-one conversations with entrepreneurs and investors to ask why establishing ICT start-ups on a continental and global scale remains a challenge on the "Silicon Savannah". The authors present evidence-based recommendations to help Kenya to continue producing globally impactful ICT innovations that improve the lives of those still waiting on the side-lines, and to inspire other nations to do the same."

"The African Agricultural Capital Fund, managed by Pearl Capital Partners, primarily invests in small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in East Africa.

This case study gives an overview of the fund, describes its capital structure, its primary impact governance mechanisms, and the stakeholders’ key risk mitigation strategies. To provide additional insight into the motivations and decisions that shaped the impact investment, interviews with representatives of the four investors and the fund manager are included."

"This primer is for philanthropists and social investors who want to learn more about the role of philanthropic capital in strengthening and growing enterprises. It serves as a "how-to" guide to social enterprise philanthropy by providing an overview of this sector and information about how philanthropists can most effectively work within it to achieve high social impact."

"A fundamental challenge for new ventures is overcoming liabilities of newness - particularly, lack of relevant knowledge. Accelerators, intense, time-compressed entrepreneurial programs, attempt to alleviate these liabilities by providing ventures with intensive learning. While accelerators have rapidly emerged as prominent players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and other practitioners have continued to raise questions about their efficacy. Mirroring such concerns, extant organizational theories offer competing predictions about whether and for which ventures accelerator participation might be beneficial. Drawing on hybrid empirical methods that triangulate across multiple quantitative and qualitative analyses, we consistently find evidence that many accelerators do indeed aid and accelerate venture development and that their effects are neither due purely to selection or credentialing. Intriguingly, our results also indicate that accelerator participation complements rather than substitutes for many forms of prior founder experience (e.g., having worked for a company that produces a lot of startups). Overall, we contribute by pioneering work on the nature and outcomes of accelerators, offering insight into the fundamental value of intensive indirect learning (vs direct learning) in new ventures and extending understanding of how organizations may speed products and services to market."

"Innovative start-ups are often considered to be a key source of innovation and job creation. As such they are the subject of several types of supportive public policies. This study examines the short-term and long-term effects of business incubators on the performance of innovative start-ups in terms of sales revenues and job creation. A large sample of N-¯=-¯2544 innovative Italian start-ups, of which 606 were incubated, was followed over a period of up to six years. Tobit and Poisson regressions and propensity-score matching analyses point towards a significant negative effect of incubator tenancy on sales revenues and no significant effect of incubation on job creation. Findings also suggest that the initially negative effect of incubation on sales revenues turns into a positive effect in the long term. The effects of incubator characteristics, in terms of ownership, certification, and size on the growth of tenant start-ups were further analysed, but these effects were found to be negligible. The study contributes to the literature on the evidence-based evaluation of business incubation performance. It suggests that public policy makers should lower their expectations regarding the numbers of new jobs created by business incubation support."

"The objective of this paper is to understand the mechanisms by which development projects facilitate market linkage of smallholder farmers based on panel data from Nicaragua. We find that activities related to entrepreneurial practices have positive and statistically significant effect on commercialization. We also find that increased commercialization is positively correlated with total bean sales income, suggesting a positive indirect effect of the activities. Other activities demonstrate no positive and robust effect on commercialization while direct positive effects on sales income can be observed. This implies that market linkage of smallholder farmers require different sets of intervention tools than traditional farm technical assistance."

"Whether differences among accelerators explain differences in the performance of member ventures is an important and underexplored question. Conversely, are the effects of accelerators so isomorphic, because they copy each other, that ventures from different accelerators report little performance differences? We use variance decomposition analysis to test whether variations in characteristics of accelerators explain performance differences in the ventures that belong to them. Using a sample of 1,442 ventures from 117 accelerator programs across 22 countries, we find that 11.13–14.18% variance of venture performance can be attributed to accelerator membership. Accelerator membership also accounted for 3.00, 5.15, and 16.65% in the variance for employee growth, employee costs, and revenue change, respectively. Our findings suggest that between accelerator differences can make a significant economic difference to venture performance."

"Many organizations around the world implement programs designed to encourage entrepreneurship, including grant prize awards, accelerator programs, incubators, etc. The goal of these programs is to supply entrepreneurs with early-stage support and visibility to help develop ideas and attract capital; but, if capital markets are efficient, good business ideas should find funding anyways. In this paper, I present evidence from the first global- scale, quasi-experimental study of whether entrepreneurship programs improve outcomes for start-up firms. I employ a regression discontinuity design to test whether winners of start- up program competitions perform better ex-post than losers, where the threshold rank for winning the competition provides exogenous variation in program participation. With 460 competitions across 113 countries and over 20,000 competing firms, I find that winning a competitions increases the probability of firm survival by 64%, the total amount of follow-on financing by $260,000 USD, and total employment by 47%, as well as other web-based metrics of firm success. Impacts are driven by medium-size prize competitions, and are precisely estimated both in countries where the costs of starting a business are low and where these costs are high. These results suggest that capital market frictions indeed prohibit start-up growth in many parts of the world."

"Recent research has suggested that the reduction of entry regulation can promote firm entry and job creation, but little is known about the quality of firms and jobs created through these reforms. To shed light on this question, we employ data from Portugal, a country which implemented one of the most dramatic and thorough policies of entry deregulation in the industrialized world. The impact of these major changes can be traced with a matched employer-employee database that provides unusually rich information on the quality of founders and employees associated with the new firms.

Our assessment indicates that the short term consequences of the reform were just as one would predict with a standard economic model of entrepreneurship: The reform resulted in increased firm formation and employment, but mostly among "marginal firms" that would have been most readily deterred by existing heavy entry regulations. These marginal firms were typically small, owned by relatively poorly-educated entrepreneurs, operating in the low-tech sector (agriculture, construction, and retail trade). These firms were also less likely to survive their first two years than comparable firms that entered prior to the reform. The social impact of entry deregulation may be limited by the quality of the firms it creates."

"Most employment in low and middle income countries is in micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, governments, non-governmental organizations and donors spend on targeted programs and broader policies to enhance employment creation in these firms. But despite these efforts, not much is known about which of these interventions are really effective. This systematic review synthesizes the existing evidence on the employment impact of these programs. The results show that the effects have so far been very modest."