"This report begins with an overview of Enclude's research methodology and the survey respondents, which included Echoing Green Fellows. The first half is dedicated to exploring respondents' current and anticipated funding by Capital Readiness Segment. The second half provides a look into the entrepreneurs' top barriers to accessing capital, as well as their desired support needs, and includes case studies of enterprises in each Segment. Finally, Echoing Green and Enclude suggest a framework for thinking through how to provide capital readiness support for a portfolio of social entrepreneurs, in addition to identifying three specific interventions and next steps."

"Special attention has been given to untie the constraints of Micro and Small Enterprises in Ethiopia for they are important vehicles to address the challenges of unemployment, economic growth and equity in the country. The government is implementing different support service programs, in the forms of financial and business development, in different parts of the country. This study is aimed at evaluating economic impact of MSEs support service programs on enterprise sales, employment and capital asset formation in Dire Dawa Administration, Ethiopia. Propensity Score Matching is employed to estimate the impact of support service program. The result revealed that the program resulted in average increment of monthly sales by 28%, employee level by 42%, and capital asset formation by 60%. It is, therefore, indispensable to strengthen and expand the support service program to non participant enterprises by giving special attention to the major problems that participant enterprises are currently facing."

"This report explores the common gaps that prevent youth from meeting job requirements, where education-focused entrepreneurs are making (or can make) the biggest difference, and what unique obstacles these entrepreneurs face. The report concludes with recommendations for how government and public officials, corporations, capacity-development providers and NGOs, and entrepreneurs themselves can best work together to improve education and skill development for youth."

"O objetivo deste artigo é realizar, de forma pioneira, uma análise dos impactos dos programas de apoio às atividades inovativas nas pequenas empresas brasileiras. Utiliza-se o método Propensity Score Matching para avaliar os impactos dos incentivos fiscais, dos programas de financiamento, da concessão de bolsas e de capital de risco, com microdados da PINTEC (2010). Os resultados apontam que o conjunto dos programas de apoio à inovação estimula os gastos com atividades inovativas das pequenas empresas. Dentre os programas, os que se mostraram mais efetivos foram os de financiamento e os de apoio à aquisição de máquinas e equipamentos."

"Asia is facing simultaneously huge growth potential and increasing inequalities, with often weak national solutions to the social issues at hand. Social purpose organisations (SPOs) – which includes but are not limited to non-profit organisations, charities and social enterprises - are seen to solve these issues sustainably. Social incubation is seen as a tool to help SPOs grow and potentially build a pipeline for social investors. Yet, how does social incubation in Asia work? The insights presented here are the first insights from surveying 15 social incubators in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore which have existed for at least two years."

"The present "Effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Development interventions on Women Entrepreneurs" issue brief is the result of an in-depth review of six meta-evaluations and twenty three rigorous impact satudies undertaken during the past 10 years in women's entrepreneurship development initiatives around the world. It provides a synthesis of impact findings and identifies interventions which seem to have worked more effectively.

The brief corroborates for example that combining finance and business training -although more costly - seems to be more effective in supporting women's business start-up than either finance or business training alone. Also, training packages that combine business and gender knowledge are more likely to lead to women's empowerment. While more evidence is still needed, the brief concludes with a series of recommendations for future interventions and impact evaluations including providing more than access to skills and finance, by also addressing gender-based barriers and women's strategic needs, in order to ensure the business success and consolidation of women entrepreneurs."

"Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds. The synthesis covers, among others, innovation grant systems in Malawi (Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme), Latin America (several Challenge Funds for Farmer Groups), Uganda (National Agricultural Advisory Services ), and Colombia (Local Agricultural Research Committees - CIAL)."

"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."