"Business incubators (BI) have been established worldwide as tools for company creation and small businesses support. BIs claim to help their tenants by providing them with the optimal conditions for increasing early stage survival and long-term performance. Practitioners and researchers agree that business support is a crucial feature of incubating businesses. Yet this is seldom researched. In this study we theoretically relate business support to help in solving problems and further investigate to what extent business incubators support their tenants overcome their developmental problems. Results show that tenants do not experience many problems and when they do business support is not necessarily sought. Furthermore, our data suggests that business support is not preferentially sought within incubator environments. When this happens, support provided by the BI does not contribute to problem solving. Finally, we discuss the impact of the type of BI on helping their tenants."

"A large share of the poor in developing countries run small enterprises, often earning low incomes. This paper explores whether the poor performance of businesses can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits, have larger revenues, serve a greater number of clients, are more likely to use formal accounting techniques, and more likely to be registered with the government. Indirect treatment effects on those entrepreneurs randomized out of the program, yet living in treatment villages, are economically meaningful, yet imprecisely measured. We present a simple model of experience and learning that helps interpret our results, and consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that "low-quality" entrepreneurs are the most likely to quit their business post-treatment, and that the positive impacts of the treatment are increasing in entrepreneurial quality."

"Market Systems Development (MSD) is an approach to poverty reduction that aims to create long-lasting and large-scale change by stimulating more inclusive growth. To achieve a systemic change vision, market systems programmes often partner with the private sector to introduce new or improved business practices, products and services. Understanding the mechanics of these business models is at the heart of programme success. This paper presents a framework for assessing the efficacy of business models. To help future practice be grounded in reality, we have included detailed business model cases studies from market systems programmes in Afghanistan, Zambia, Kosovo and Nigeria. The paper ends by extracting five key lessons for implementers to improve the way in which they engage with the private sector in building 'win-win' models."

"Many Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) technologies fail to achieve their full potential impact due to low levels of adoption by smallholder farmers and difficulties in scaling CSA. This paper presents how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can act as change agents for the uptake of CSA technologies where their business models may be seen as adoption and scaling mechanisms. Drawing upon our fieldwork in Punjab (India) during which over 100 respondents have been interviewed, critical issues and enabling factors for the business model of two types of SMEs, i.e. farmer cooperatives and individual service providers of climate smart technologies have been identified. Enabling factors supporting adoption are driven by scientific and practical evidence of CSA technologies, good partnership between SMEs and research institutes, good customer relationships and effective channels through farmers' field trials. Critical issues consist of distortive government subsidies on energy and the lack of market intelligence affecting the profitability of the business model. Scaling is enhanced through market intelligence and a favouring regulatory landscape. However, difficult socio-economic circumstances and distortive government subsidies limit the role of SMEs business model as mechanism for scaling."

"Management has a large effect on the productivity of medium and large firms. But does management matter in micro and small firms, where the majority of the labor force in developing countries works? We develop 26 questions that measure business practices in marketing, stock-keeping, record-keeping, and financial planning. These questions have been administered in surveys in Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. We show that variation in business practices explains as much of the variation in outcomes-sales, profits, and labor productivity and total factor productivity-in microenterprises as in larger enterprises."

"Business support interventions in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) direct a large amount of resources to SMEs, with the assumption that institutional constraints impede small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from generating profits and employment at the firm level, which in turn is thought to impede economic growth and poverty reduction. Yet despite this abundance of resources, very little is known about the impact of such interventions. To address this gap, this systematic review analyses evaluations of SME support services in LMICs to help inform policy debates pertaining to SMEs and business support services. This review examines the available evidence on the effects of SME support services in LMICs on firm-level performance indicators (such as revenues, profits, and productivity), employment generation, and labour productivity."

"The Incubator for Agribusiness and Agroindustry at Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia (IAA-IPB) assists during three stages in the incubation process:early incubation (mentoring creative ideas, assisting in evaluation of market prospects, defining and outsourcing technology needs);incubation (helping production begin); and post-graduation (consulting on business plan revision and facilitating access to financial resources and a market network for new products and new technology implementation).

The utmost attention must be paid to incubatees during both the selection process and the incubation period, in order to ensure that they grow and are successful. Their success is the success of the incubator itself. One-to-one interaction with the incubatees is necessary to understand their problems and special needs and to help them find solutions. In addition, incubators are advised to maintain relations with successful graduates. They will continue to need assistance, they will be able to assist the incubator by being role models to new incubatees, and they represent a potential source of income for the incubator through profit sharing or equity investment."

"In this paper, we propose an overarching incubator model that synthesizes elements and best practices emanating from the five archetypes empirically identified and also incorporates substantially higher economies of scale and scope, as well as global and local (gloCal) knowledge arbitrage potential. This paper presents an architectural blueprint for designing a gloCal, real and virtual network of incubators (G-RVIN) as a knowledge and innovation infra-structure and infra-technology which would link entrepreneurs and micro-entrepreneurs with local, regional, and global networks of customers, suppliers and complementors and thus help not only bridge, but also leverage, the diverse divides (digital, knowledge, cultural, socio-political, etc.)."

"The study (i) reviews the definitions and concepts of social enterprises, (ii) outlines the landscape across 10 selected countries in Asia and Latin America, (iii) discusses challenges to scaling as faced by social enterprises, and (iv) presents suggestions for development banks to extend support to social enterprises through public and private sector investments. The study categorizes social enterprises and argues that the comparative advantage of development banks is to support selected social enterprises that are commercially bankable and have the base of the pyramid (BOP) at the core of their business operations. Development banks can support these enterprises-considered as the inclusive businesses of the future-through investing in impact funds and/or public sector loans."

"Impact-oriented accelerators, a relatively new type of entrepreneur support program, are proliferating as practitioners, philanthropic funders, and investors work to unlock the full potential of entrepreneurship-led economic development. These accelerators aspire to support entrepreneurs, in large part by driving investment into promising ventures that work in marginalized sectors and regions around the world. Given the opportunity costs of the human, organizational, and financial resources required to run accelerators, it is important to determine whether they are having this intended impact. To assess the effect of acceleration on outside equity investment, we analyze application and follow-up data from a matched sample of 1647 entrepreneurs who applied to 77 impact-oriented accelerators. Our main finding is promising. In the first follow-up year, accelerator program participants attract significantly more outside equity than their rejected counterparts. Further analysis suggests that this positive equity bump is not due to cherry picking obviously promising ventures during selection processes. Moreover, the effect is tied to the number of accelerated months in the follow-up year. Despite these promising observations, we find that the equity investment effect does not extend to ventures working in emerging markets, or to those with women on their founding teams. Thus, the benefits of accelerators for entrepreneurship-led development are not yet reaching the places and people that have the hardest time attracting capital on their own. We conclude the paper by outlining the challenges associated with extending the positive effects of acceleration into entrepreneurial domains that are most challenging from an economic development perspective."