From Learning to Earning : An Impact Evaluation of the Digital Opportunity Trust Entrepreneurship Training
Business and entrepreneurship training programs have become popular interventions intended to boost the profits of small businesses around the world. Despite their popularity, rigorous evidence on the impact of entrepreneurship training programs is...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/963301475096550281/From-learning-to-earning-an-impact-evaluation-of-the-Digital-Opportunity-Trust-DOT-entrepreneurship-training http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25450 |
| Summary: | Business and entrepreneurship training
programs have become popular interventions intended to boost
the profits of small businesses around the world. Despite
their popularity, rigorous evidence on the impact of
entrepreneurship training programs is thin. Indeed, a recent
systematic review of published literature on
entrepreneurship training noted that although
entrepreneurship training programs are widely distributed
and attended by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs globally,
the majority of these programs have not yet been evaluated
and thus their effects have not been verified. In
October-November 2014 baseline data on 800 female
entrepreneurs in Mekelle was collected. 400 of these female
entrepreneurs were randomly assigned to the treatment group
and offered to participate in the Digital Opportunity Trust
(DOT) training immediately and the other 400 entrepreneurs
were assigned to the control group and had to wait a minimum
of 12 months before being offered the training. The first
round of training was offered to the treatment group from
January 2015 in half-day sessions over a period of 15 to 20
days at no cost to the participants, so that entrepreneurs
could complete the training while continuing to attend to
their businesses on a daily basis. From January to March
2016, approximately one year after the treatment group was
offered the training, the research team followed-up with 729
female entrepreneurs of the original sample. The results in
this policy note are intention-to-treat (ITT) impacts, i.e.
the impact of being offered training, using the midline
survey data. The preliminary results from this study confirm
that a more innovative (non-cognitive skills based) type of
business training can more effectively support women’s
businesses. Additionally, participants of the DOT
entrepreneurship training tend to be the lower performing
businesses (measured by business profits), so reaching the
higher performing businesses may require other training
delivery mechanisms such as on-site consulting or coaching.
This finding has particular relevance for those programs
that are targeting specific types of entrepreneurs. Further
research will rigorously examine the longer run impacts of
the program and will attempt to uncover the missing piece of
the puzzle of how entrepreneurs translate business training
into business success. |
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