From Learning to Earning : An Impact Evaluation of the Digital Opportunity Trust Entrepreneurship Training

Alibhai, Salman ; Buehren, Niklas ; Papineni, Sreelakshmi

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: business training;    women entrepreneurs;    entrepreneurship;    business performance;    profits;   

RP-ID  :  108547

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Business and entrepreneurship trainingprograms have become popular interventions intended to boostthe profits of small businesses around the world. Despitetheir popularity, rigorous evidence on the impact ofentrepreneurship training programs is thin. Indeed, a recentsystematic review of published literature onentrepreneurship training noted that althoughentrepreneurship training programs are widely distributedand attended by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs globally,the majority of these programs have not yet been evaluatedand thus their effects have not been verified. InOctober-November 2014 baseline data on 800 femaleentrepreneurs in Mekelle was collected. 400 of these femaleentrepreneurs were randomly assigned to the treatment groupand offered to participate in the Digital Opportunity Trust(DOT) training immediately and the other 400 entrepreneurswere assigned to the control group and had to wait a minimumof 12 months before being offered the training. The firstround of training was offered to the treatment group fromJanuary 2015 in half-day sessions over a period of 15 to 20days at no cost to the participants, so that entrepreneurscould complete the training while continuing to attend totheir businesses on a daily basis. From January to March2016, approximately one year after the treatment group wasoffered the training, the research team followed-up with 729female entrepreneurs of the original sample. The results inthis policy note are intention-to-treat (ITT) impacts, i.e.the impact of being offered training, using the midlinesurvey data. The preliminary results from this study confirmthat a more innovative (non-cognitive skills based) type ofbusiness training can more effectively support women’sbusinesses. Additionally, participants of the DOTentrepreneurship training tend to be the lower performingbusinesses (measured by business profits), so reaching thehigher performing businesses may require other trainingdelivery mechanisms such as on-site consulting or coaching.This finding has particular relevance for those programsthat are targeting specific types of entrepreneurs. Furtherresearch will rigorously examine the longer run impacts ofthe program and will attempt to uncover the missing piece ofthe puzzle of how entrepreneurs translate business traininginto business success.