"This study evaluates the impact of business-development-support programs (credit, training, and a combination of both) on the performance of micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in Ethiopia. Using 2015 Ethiopian urban survey data and employing endogenous-switching regressions for multiple treatments, we document a positive and significant effect of credit, training, and a combination of training and credit on MSEs. Our results highlight the heterogeneity in treatment effects between women- and men-owned MSEs: women-owned businesses do not benefit from access to treatments. Our results suggest that improving the performance of MSEs requires fine-tuned interventions that meet the specific needs of men and women who own small businesses rather than one-size-fits-all programs."

"The objective of the study was to rigorously evaluate SME programs in four Latin American countries Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru to gain insights into whether SME programs work, which programs perform better than others, and why. This report should be of interest to country governments, policymakers with responsibilities for SMEs, local researchers and the private sector in the region, as well as World Bank staff and bilateral donors."

"This paper investigates the impact of investment in human capital (off-the-job training in short term) on productivity of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method with dynamic approach. The paper employs the data from two surveys on the SMEs in Vietnam in the year of 2009 and 2011 that provide detailed information about training and firm characteristics. The results found that training has significantly positive impact on the productivity of household business, but there is no evidence on the impact of training on productivity of the firms in formal sector in the short run; and there is no evidence on the impact of training activities on productivity in the medium run (one-or-two-year after training) for both household business and formal enterprises. Besides, qualitative approach shall be conducted to provide more description on training efficiencies in some specific cases."

"Why is high-growth entrepreneurship scarce in developing countries? Does this scarcity reflect firm capabilities constraints? We explore these questions using as a laboratory an accelerator in Colombia that selects participants using scores from randomly assigned judges and offers them training, advice, and visibility but no cash. Exploiting exogenous differences in judges' scoring generosity, we show that alleviating constraints to firm capabilities unlocks innovative entrepreneurs' potential but does not transform subpar ideas into high-growth firms. The results demonstrate that some high-potential entrepreneurs in developing economies face firm capabilities constraints and accelerators can help identify these entrepreneurs and boost their growth."

"This whitepaper gathers the collective wisdom of the industry to formulate a first set of milestones and metrics. We strongly advocate that, in the near term, the framework illustrated in this document be used to evolve and institute a nationally accepted set of metrics and milestones for incubators in India. We also advocate that the funding organizations implement these metrics and milestones, not only to select the host partner but also to track, measure progress and to reward success. Some recommendations in this document may require policy review and modifications."

"Small businesses significantly contribute to the economic development of a country. From purchasing groceries on an app to enabling new modes of learning, small businesses, especially start-ups, are transforming India into a technology-driven nation. This handbook is an endeavour to provide insight on several models that could be explored to set up a fund to promote start-ups, contributions to which would qualify as CSR spend under the Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013."

"The vast majority of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries are located in industrial clusters, and the majority of such clusters have yet to see their growth take off. The performance of MSE clusters is especially low in Sub-Saharan Africa. While existing studies often attribute the poor performance to factors outside firms, problems within firms are seldom scrutinized. In fact, entrepreneurs in these clusters are unfamiliar with standard business practices. Based on a randomized experiment in Ghana, this study demonstrates that basic-level management training improves business practices and performance."

"Firm productivity is low in African countries, prompting governments to try a number of active policies to improve it. Yet despite the millions of dollars spent on these policies, we are far from a situation where we know whether many of them are yielding the desired payoffs. This paper establishes some basic facts about the number and heterogeneity of firms in different sub-Saharan African countries and discusses their implications for experimental and structural approaches towards trying to estimate firm policy impacts. It shows that the typical firm program such as a matching grant scheme or business training program involves only 100 to 300 firms, which are often very heterogeneous in terms of employment and sales levels. As a result, standard experimental designs will lack any power to detect reasonable sized treatment impacts, while structural models which assume common production technologies and few missing markets will be ill-suited to capture the key constraints firms face. Nevertheless, the author suggests a way forward which involves focusing on a more homogeneous sub-sample of firms and collecting a lot more data on them than is typically collected."

"Corporate venturing has gained much attention due to challenges and changes that occur because of discontinuous innovations - which seem to be promoted by digitalization. In this context, open innovation has become a promising tool for established companies to strengthen their innovation capabilities. While the external opening of the innovation process has gained much attention, the internal opening lacks on investigations. Especially new organizational forms, such as Internal Corporate Accelerators, have not been investigated sufficiently. This study, which is based on 13 interviews from two German tech-companies, contributes to a better understanding of this new form of corporate venturing and the resulting effects on the organizational renewal."

"In emerging-market countries, commercial institutions do not always develop sufficiently quickly or effectively to support ambitious entrepreneurs. How might intermediaries remedy these problems? We address this question by drawing on institutional literatures to develop the concept of "open system intermediaries." Our research design involves examining business incubators in emerging markets as a form of open system intermediary. Empirically, we examine the relative emphasis that business incubators in emerging-market countries place on developing markets versus developing specific businesses. The study further examines how private, government, academic, and non- governmental organization sponsorship of incubators influences the mix of services that incubators provide. In sum, this work contributes to our understanding of how, why, and when intermediaries emerge to address institutional failures."