Theme
Capacity Development

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"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."

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"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."

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"Historically, small enterprises have played an important role in technological innovation, often leading to the introduction of paradigm-shifting technologies and changes in the way we live. However, they face many challenges in maturing to a point where they survive and have positive social, environmental and economic impacts. They often have weak entrepreneurial support systems, fragmented linkages to climate technology markets and a lack of finance for entrepreneurial activities. These challenges are exacerbated in developing countries.

This paper identifies the challenges and opportunities for strengthening climate technology incubators and accelerators in developing countries."

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"This paper examines the sparse but rapidly growing literature on Business (and Seed) Accelerators. It summarises the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that have been identified by academic authors, and matches each factor to operational and strategic activity within an Accelerator and to theoretical arguments for and against their importance. The aim is to match CSFs with literature from a wider range of disciplines, particularly psychology, sociology, economics, leadership and learning. These each help explain, justify, inform and give a theoretical context to the documented CSFs. The background models, once identified, are useful tools in the planning and analysis of Accelerators."

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"In recent years, accelerator programs experienced substantial growth, becoming an important part of the entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. New ventures that want to participate in such programs must go through a multi-stage and highly competitive process, with only one out of ten applicants being successful. However, our knowledge with regards to the factors that drive the decisions of accelerator programs is limited, and empirical research on this topic is scarce. We hypothesise that the national culture of the founding team can play an important role as a proxy for the unobservable values and the behaviour of the venture founders, and we examine the impact of cultural diversity on the probability of being admitted into an accelerator program. The results show that diversity enhances the probability of being selected. This finding is robust across several specifications, and while accounting for the potential endogeneity of cultural diversity."

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"During the five-year period 2012-2017 we ran the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), we learned many lessons that we hope other accelerators can benefit from to increase their own effectiveness. This paper describes that learning journey through our top ten lessons."

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"The recent emergence of business accelerators around the world has positioned them as a key player in many regional innovation ecosystems. However, significant confusion exists among academics, industry practitioners and policy-makers about what these organizations are. The confusion stems from their association with incubators and from a lack of differentiation among accelerators. As a result of such lack of clear conceptualization academic and other stakeholders risk drawing false conclusions regarding how these organizations fit into different aspects of the regional innovation ecosystem. In this study we use archival and interview data from the Australian context to differentiate accelerators. While we find accelerators that fit the emerging definition of the concept, we also find several that stretch the definition and meaning of 'accelerator'."

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"The authors conduct a randomized experiment among women in urban Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the most commonly used business training course in developing countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Business program. They work with two representative groups of women: a random sample of women operating subsistence enterprises and a random sample of women who are out of the labor force but interested in starting a business. They track the impacts of two treatments -- training only and training plus a cash grant -- over two years with four follow-up surveys and find that the short and medium-term impacts differ."

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"Business training is a widely used development tool, yet little is known about its impact. We study the effects of such a business training program held in Central America. To deal with endogenous selection into the training program, we use a regression discontinuity design, exploiting the fact that a fixed number of applicants are taken into the training program based on a pre-training score. Business training significantly increases the probability that an applicant to the workshop starts a business or expands an existing business. Results also suggest gender heterogeneity as well as the presence of financial constraints."

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"This publication identifies ways to catalyse finance for climate technology incubators and accelerators in developing countries. It aims to inform the Green Climate Fund as it develops a request for proposals on climate technology incubators and accelerators. It also aims to inform other financiers and policymakers on opportunities for catalysing financing in this area. It is based on the outputs of a thematic dialogue on incubators and accelerators held in March 2018. It also draws upon an extensive literature review undertaken by these bodies."

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