Book
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Observing Acceleration: Uncovering the Effects of Accelerators on Impact-Oriented Entrepreneurs
Peter W. Roberts & Saurabh A. Lall This book summarizes five years of learning from data collected as part of the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative. We present data describing impact-oriented ventures and accelerators that operate in both high-income countries and in emerging markets. Unlike previous studies, this book does not focus on a few high-profile accelerators (like TechStars and Y Combinator) and startups (like AirBnB and Uber). Instead, it compares a range of accelerator programs that target specific impact areas, challenging regions, and marginalized entrepreneurs, and serves as a tool for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. Available at https://amzn.to/2VtfC0Y | https://bit.ly/2Qmxmra DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00042-4 | ISBN (online): 978-3-030-00042-4 Covered in Forbes - "Social Impact Accelerators Drive Revenue Growth Among Just a Small Portion of Ventures." The dataset used for this book (along with data from two additional years) is available for scholarly research through www.galidata.org. If you use the dataset, please cite the book as follows - Roberts, P. W., & Lall, S. A. (2018). Observing acceleration: Uncovering the effects of accelerators on impact-oriented entrepreneurs. Springer. |
Journal Articles
Accepted pre-print versions of journal articles are linked below for download, along with the DOI for citation. Please feel free to email me for published versions of any of these articles if you cannot access them for any reason.
Asking Better Questions : The Effect of Changing Investment Organizations’ Evaluation Practices on Gender Disparities in Funding Innovation
(with Amisha Miller, Markus Goldstein & Joao Montalvao)
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10625 (2023)
Female innovators raise fewer resources from investors, even when their ventures are similar to those of all-male teams. Efforts to mitigate the disparities have typically focused on changing how founders seek investment. However, the causes of gender disparities are systemic: in uncertain contexts, evaluators value women’s competence or leadership potential lower than men’s, and investors inquire more about risks when facing female founders than males. What is the effect of investment organizations’ evaluation practices on gender disparities in funding innovation? This paper examines a two-stage global field experiment with investors making 1,871 investment decisions on early-stage startups, which resulted in $320,000 invested in 16 startups. The experiment changed an organization’s evaluation framework to systematize investor inquiry across all ventures by including prompts about (1) risk and reward and (2) progress during the evaluation period. This caused treated investors to (1) assess startups more consistently and (2) assess startup competence more dynamically than control investors. It eliminated, even reversed, the gender gap in investment outcomes. These results have implications for organizations making decisions in uncertain contexts, and those aiming to reduce gender disparities.
Founding Team Entrepreneurial Experience, External Financing and Social Enterprise Performance
(with Sreevas Sahasranamam, Katerina Nicolopoulou & Eleanor Shaw)
British Journal of Management (2023) | https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12726
This paper examines the influence of founding team entrepreneurial experience (for-profit and non-profit) on social enterprise performance and also considers the contingent effects of two forms of external financial capital (commercial and philanthropic finance), through the lens of both human capital and institutional logics. Using a global dataset of social enterprises, we find that non-profit entrepreneurial experience boosts social enterprise performance. Additionally, we find that having a complementary institutional logics (social or commercial) fit between the founding team's human capital and external financial capital is positively associated with social enterprise performance.
Digital platforms and entrepreneurial support: a field experiment in online mentoring*
(with Dyana Mason and Li-Wei Chen)
Small Business Economics (2022) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00704-8
The benefits of entrepreneurial mentorship are well documented, but there is limited research on how entrepreneurs connect with mentors, especially in digital settings. We partnered with an online platform that connects entrepreneurs to potential mentors to conduct a field experiment in online mentoring. Drawing on literature on entrepreneurial mentorship and Social Cognitive Theory, we compared the effects of three interventions on the likelihood of reaching out and making a connection with a mentor in a digital setting. We find that showing entrepreneurs a video of a successful mentor–mentee relationship increases the chances that they will reach out to a potential mentor but does not improve their chances of making a connection. These findings are more pronounced for female entrepreneurs. While not all entrepreneurs adopt the offered interventions, those that make the effort to learn to navigate the online platform and craft a suitable introductory message are successful in establishing a mentoring connection. We discuss these implications for both theory and practice.
*Field Experiment Pre-registered at AEA Social Science Registry: AEARCTR-0003644
How Social Ventures Grow: Understanding the Role of Philanthropic Grants in Scaling Social Entrepreneurship
(with Jacob Park)
Winner of the Academy of Management Fellows Responsible Research in Business & Management Award 2022
Business & Society (2022) | https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0007650320973434
Drawing on institutional logics and signaling theory, this study uses a panel dataset of 3,401 nascent social ventures to investigate the important role philanthropic grant funding plays in the organizational and financial development of social ventures. We find mixed results, with positive effects on employment and subsequent access to debt finance, but no effects on revenues and access to equity. Our findings connect these theories by suggesting philanthropic grants provide social ventures with flexibility to invest in human capital without pushing them to pursue short-term financial objectives, and that receiving a philanthropic grant provides a signal that is interpreted differently by debt and equity financiers. These findings are especially relevant as funders increasingly use grants to support social entrepreneurship.
Can Institutional Support Improve Volunteer Quality? An Analysis of Online Volunteer Mentors
(with Dyana Mason and Li-Wei Chen)
Voluntas (2021) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00351-9
Volunteer management practices have been shown to have positive effects on employees in terms of skill development, job success, organizational identity, and morale in the public, nonprofit and corporate sectors. Despite considerable research on volunteering, questions remain about how management practices of volunteer programs may affect volunteer performance. Leveraging data comparing self-enrolled and corporate-recruited volunteer mentors into a large-scale online program for entrepreneurs, this study measures the impact of institutional support on volunteer intensity, persistence, and quality. It also presents a novel way to measure volunteer quality through sentiment analysis to measure the tone of online messages, an emerging statistical technique. Findings suggest that a high level of institutional support leads to higher quality mentor engagement, compared to self-enrolled volunteers, while a low level of support leads to mentor quality much lower than self-enrolled volunteers.
Institutional Intermediaries as Legitimizing Agents for Social Enterprise in China and India
(with Janelle Kerlin, Shuyang Peng, and Shicun Tracy Cui)
Public Management Review (2021) | https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2020.1865441
We conducted a comparative analysis of social enterprise intermediaries in China and India to better understand how they mediate the influence of external institutions to help legitimize and institutionalize social enterprises in new settings. Drawing on data collected from surveys, interviews and websites in each country, we find that intermediaries are important legitimizing actors for social enterprises but their specific strategies can vary in the different contexts due to differences in institutional pressures. Such an understanding is key to building intermediaries’ capacity to institutionalize and ease the entrance of social enterprises as new institutional actors in these settings.
Are we accelerating equity investment into impact-oriented ventures?
(with Li-Wei Chen & Peter W. Roberts)
World Development (2020) | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104952
Impact-oriented accelerators aspire to support entrepreneurs, in large part by driving investment into promising ventures that work in marginalized sectors and regions around the world. 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.
The Expat Gap: Are local-born entrepreneurs in developing countries at a disadvantage when seeking grant funding?
(with Li-Wei Chen & Abigayle Davidson)
Public Administration Review (2019) | https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13076
Using a dataset of 3,434 ventures across 92 low and middle-income countries, we find compelling evidence that expatriate founders (from high-income countries) are more likely to receive grant funding (and in larger amounts) compared to local founders. In future research, we hope to work directly with donors to rigorously test new approaches that can make access to funding more equitable.
From Legitimacy to Learning – How Impact Measurement Perceptions and Practices Evolve in Social Enterprise – Social Finance Organization Relationships
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (2019) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-018-00081-5
Through qualitative research with eight social enterprises and their funders, I find evidence that both sides view impact measurement primarily as a means for establishing legitimacy prior to engagement, and in the early stages of their relationship. Eventually, social enterprises embrace impact measurement as a tool for organizational learning, and social finance organizations develop more empowering approaches for impact measurement.
Measuring to Improve Versus Measuring to Prove: Understanding the Adoption of Social Performance Measurement Practices in Nascent Social Enterprises
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (2017) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-017-9898-1
Using a dataset of 1,864 nascent social enterprises from around the world, I find that the adoption of social performance measurement practices is related to the growing rationalization of the social sector, and not only driven by external factors like funder expectations.
The Appeal of Social Accelerators: What do Social Entrepreneurs Value?
(with Sheela Pandey, Sucheta Ahlawat & Sanjay K. Pandey)
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship (2017) | https://doi.org/10.1080/19420676.2017.1299035
Are the most-publicized benefits of social accelerators also the ones most valued by social entrepreneurs? Using a dataset of over 4,000 social entrepreneurs, we find that entrepreneurs with high levels of generic human capital value the benefits of mentorship, while those with more task-specific human capital value funding benefits.
Bridging the “Pioneer Gap”: The Role of Accelerators in Launching High-Impact Enterprises
(with Lily Bowles & Ross Baird)
Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization (2013) | https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_a_00191
This descriptive study introduces the idea of the impact-oriented accelerator, offering the first quantitative analysis of these organizations. Using data from 52 impact accelerators around the world, we describe organizational structure, finances, geographic scope, and human capital, and suggest several new directions for research on the topic.
Asking Better Questions : The Effect of Changing Investment Organizations’ Evaluation Practices on Gender Disparities in Funding Innovation
(with Amisha Miller, Markus Goldstein & Joao Montalvao)
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10625 (2023)
Female innovators raise fewer resources from investors, even when their ventures are similar to those of all-male teams. Efforts to mitigate the disparities have typically focused on changing how founders seek investment. However, the causes of gender disparities are systemic: in uncertain contexts, evaluators value women’s competence or leadership potential lower than men’s, and investors inquire more about risks when facing female founders than males. What is the effect of investment organizations’ evaluation practices on gender disparities in funding innovation? This paper examines a two-stage global field experiment with investors making 1,871 investment decisions on early-stage startups, which resulted in $320,000 invested in 16 startups. The experiment changed an organization’s evaluation framework to systematize investor inquiry across all ventures by including prompts about (1) risk and reward and (2) progress during the evaluation period. This caused treated investors to (1) assess startups more consistently and (2) assess startup competence more dynamically than control investors. It eliminated, even reversed, the gender gap in investment outcomes. These results have implications for organizations making decisions in uncertain contexts, and those aiming to reduce gender disparities.
Founding Team Entrepreneurial Experience, External Financing and Social Enterprise Performance
(with Sreevas Sahasranamam, Katerina Nicolopoulou & Eleanor Shaw)
British Journal of Management (2023) | https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12726
This paper examines the influence of founding team entrepreneurial experience (for-profit and non-profit) on social enterprise performance and also considers the contingent effects of two forms of external financial capital (commercial and philanthropic finance), through the lens of both human capital and institutional logics. Using a global dataset of social enterprises, we find that non-profit entrepreneurial experience boosts social enterprise performance. Additionally, we find that having a complementary institutional logics (social or commercial) fit between the founding team's human capital and external financial capital is positively associated with social enterprise performance.
Digital platforms and entrepreneurial support: a field experiment in online mentoring*
(with Dyana Mason and Li-Wei Chen)
Small Business Economics (2022) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00704-8
The benefits of entrepreneurial mentorship are well documented, but there is limited research on how entrepreneurs connect with mentors, especially in digital settings. We partnered with an online platform that connects entrepreneurs to potential mentors to conduct a field experiment in online mentoring. Drawing on literature on entrepreneurial mentorship and Social Cognitive Theory, we compared the effects of three interventions on the likelihood of reaching out and making a connection with a mentor in a digital setting. We find that showing entrepreneurs a video of a successful mentor–mentee relationship increases the chances that they will reach out to a potential mentor but does not improve their chances of making a connection. These findings are more pronounced for female entrepreneurs. While not all entrepreneurs adopt the offered interventions, those that make the effort to learn to navigate the online platform and craft a suitable introductory message are successful in establishing a mentoring connection. We discuss these implications for both theory and practice.
*Field Experiment Pre-registered at AEA Social Science Registry: AEARCTR-0003644
How Social Ventures Grow: Understanding the Role of Philanthropic Grants in Scaling Social Entrepreneurship
(with Jacob Park)
Winner of the Academy of Management Fellows Responsible Research in Business & Management Award 2022
Business & Society (2022) | https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0007650320973434
Drawing on institutional logics and signaling theory, this study uses a panel dataset of 3,401 nascent social ventures to investigate the important role philanthropic grant funding plays in the organizational and financial development of social ventures. We find mixed results, with positive effects on employment and subsequent access to debt finance, but no effects on revenues and access to equity. Our findings connect these theories by suggesting philanthropic grants provide social ventures with flexibility to invest in human capital without pushing them to pursue short-term financial objectives, and that receiving a philanthropic grant provides a signal that is interpreted differently by debt and equity financiers. These findings are especially relevant as funders increasingly use grants to support social entrepreneurship.
Can Institutional Support Improve Volunteer Quality? An Analysis of Online Volunteer Mentors
(with Dyana Mason and Li-Wei Chen)
Voluntas (2021) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00351-9
Volunteer management practices have been shown to have positive effects on employees in terms of skill development, job success, organizational identity, and morale in the public, nonprofit and corporate sectors. Despite considerable research on volunteering, questions remain about how management practices of volunteer programs may affect volunteer performance. Leveraging data comparing self-enrolled and corporate-recruited volunteer mentors into a large-scale online program for entrepreneurs, this study measures the impact of institutional support on volunteer intensity, persistence, and quality. It also presents a novel way to measure volunteer quality through sentiment analysis to measure the tone of online messages, an emerging statistical technique. Findings suggest that a high level of institutional support leads to higher quality mentor engagement, compared to self-enrolled volunteers, while a low level of support leads to mentor quality much lower than self-enrolled volunteers.
Institutional Intermediaries as Legitimizing Agents for Social Enterprise in China and India
(with Janelle Kerlin, Shuyang Peng, and Shicun Tracy Cui)
Public Management Review (2021) | https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2020.1865441
We conducted a comparative analysis of social enterprise intermediaries in China and India to better understand how they mediate the influence of external institutions to help legitimize and institutionalize social enterprises in new settings. Drawing on data collected from surveys, interviews and websites in each country, we find that intermediaries are important legitimizing actors for social enterprises but their specific strategies can vary in the different contexts due to differences in institutional pressures. Such an understanding is key to building intermediaries’ capacity to institutionalize and ease the entrance of social enterprises as new institutional actors in these settings.
Are we accelerating equity investment into impact-oriented ventures?
(with Li-Wei Chen & Peter W. Roberts)
World Development (2020) | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104952
Impact-oriented accelerators aspire to support entrepreneurs, in large part by driving investment into promising ventures that work in marginalized sectors and regions around the world. 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.
The Expat Gap: Are local-born entrepreneurs in developing countries at a disadvantage when seeking grant funding?
(with Li-Wei Chen & Abigayle Davidson)
Public Administration Review (2019) | https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13076
Using a dataset of 3,434 ventures across 92 low and middle-income countries, we find compelling evidence that expatriate founders (from high-income countries) are more likely to receive grant funding (and in larger amounts) compared to local founders. In future research, we hope to work directly with donors to rigorously test new approaches that can make access to funding more equitable.
From Legitimacy to Learning – How Impact Measurement Perceptions and Practices Evolve in Social Enterprise – Social Finance Organization Relationships
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (2019) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-018-00081-5
Through qualitative research with eight social enterprises and their funders, I find evidence that both sides view impact measurement primarily as a means for establishing legitimacy prior to engagement, and in the early stages of their relationship. Eventually, social enterprises embrace impact measurement as a tool for organizational learning, and social finance organizations develop more empowering approaches for impact measurement.
Measuring to Improve Versus Measuring to Prove: Understanding the Adoption of Social Performance Measurement Practices in Nascent Social Enterprises
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (2017) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-017-9898-1
Using a dataset of 1,864 nascent social enterprises from around the world, I find that the adoption of social performance measurement practices is related to the growing rationalization of the social sector, and not only driven by external factors like funder expectations.
The Appeal of Social Accelerators: What do Social Entrepreneurs Value?
(with Sheela Pandey, Sucheta Ahlawat & Sanjay K. Pandey)
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship (2017) | https://doi.org/10.1080/19420676.2017.1299035
Are the most-publicized benefits of social accelerators also the ones most valued by social entrepreneurs? Using a dataset of over 4,000 social entrepreneurs, we find that entrepreneurs with high levels of generic human capital value the benefits of mentorship, while those with more task-specific human capital value funding benefits.
Bridging the “Pioneer Gap”: The Role of Accelerators in Launching High-Impact Enterprises
(with Lily Bowles & Ross Baird)
Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization (2013) | https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_a_00191
This descriptive study introduces the idea of the impact-oriented accelerator, offering the first quantitative analysis of these organizations. Using data from 52 impact accelerators around the world, we describe organizational structure, finances, geographic scope, and human capital, and suggest several new directions for research on the topic.
Reports & Other Publications
- Accelerating the Flow of Funds into Early-Stage Ventures An Initial Look at Program Differences and Design Choices.
The Aspen Institute and Emory University (2018) - What's Working in Startup Acceleration: Insights from Fifteen Village Capital Programs.
The Aspen Institute and Emory University (2016) - The State of Measurement Practice in the Small and Growing Business Sector.
The Aspen Institute (2014) - Measurement for Small and Growing Businesses.
(with Genevieve Edens) Stanford Social Innovation Review (2014) - Metrics 3.0: A New Vision for Shared Metrics.
(with Genevieve Edens, Mike McCreless & C.J. Fonzi) Stanford Social Innovation Review (2014) - Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostic Toolkit.
The Aspen Institute (2013) - Small and Growing Businesses: Investing in the Missing Middle for Poverty Alleviation.
The Aspen Institute (2012) - Power to the People: Investing in Clean Energy for the Base of the Pyramid in India.
World Resources Institute (2010) - Powering up: The investment potential of energy service companies in India.
World Resources Institute (2009)
