Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SAIM (A Scientific Approach to Innovation Management)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-03-01 bis 2024-08-31
Entrepreneurship is one of the engines of economic growth and an important component of contemporary Society. It is a pervasive phenomenon and a key driver of innovation. The key problem the project addresses is how to improve entrepreneurs’ decisions in order to increase the odds of success, reduce wasteful exploration and enable startup performance in terms of growth. Solving this problem is important for three reasons.
First, entrepreneurs are often resource constrained. Developing methods that prevent them from wasting time, money and effort pursuing projects that are not promising is important for them and their families.
Second, many entrepreneurial institutions (accelerators, incubators, universities, etc.) offer programs to support venture development. These programs are rarely grounded on rigorous research and proven methods. Improving them would increase the probability that entrepreneurs come up with good ideas and scale up them.
Third, entrepreneurship has increasingly become a popular topic in undergraduate and graduate programs at universities around the world. Developing curricula based on rigorous research and proven methods would increase the quality of the entrepreneurial skills.
First, entrepreneurs are often resource constrained. Developing methods that prevent them from wasting time, money and effort pursuing projects that are not promising is important for them and their families.
Second, many entrepreneurial institutions (accelerators, incubators, universities, etc.) offer programs to support venture development. These programs are rarely grounded on rigorous research and proven methods. Improving them would increase the probability that entrepreneurs come up with good ideas and scale up them.
Third, entrepreneurship has increasingly become a popular topic in undergraduate and graduate programs at universities around the world. Developing curricula based on rigorous research and proven methods would increase the quality of the entrepreneurial skills.
So far, the PI and research team have:
1. developed the theoretical models, hypotheses and predictions about how the adoption of the scientific approach impact entrepreneurial decision making.
2. designed and conducted six Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) at six different locations around the world, leveraging on the following local partnering universities: a) Bocconi, Milan, Italy; b) RSM, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; c) Bayes, London, UK; d) UniAndes, Bogotà, Colombia; e) ESADE, Barcelona, Spain; f) MCC, Chennai, India). The RCTs follow the same, standardized experimental design with the except of the one in Chennai, India, where local conditions required to move from a 3-arm to a 2-arm experimental design. The RCTs were conducted between 2021 and early 2024 and are now completed in terms of execution of the intervention and data collection. Each RCT lasted on average 15 months.
3. Started to clean the data and organized the dataset;
4. Started to analyze the data;
5. Started to write papers.
Since the experimental design is the same and the experimental protocol standardized across five of the six locations, analyses are currently being conducted both at the disaggregated and aggregated level.
Preliminary to rolling out the RCTs at the six locations, the research team set up three sets of procedures regarding:
1. Ethics scrutiny and approval (all the RCTs have been approved by the relevant Ethical Committee and/or IRB or equivalent)
2. RCTs’ preregistration on the AEA RCT registry (AEARCTR-0008945)
3. Partnership agreements with the local institutions involved (including ethics, quality and safety standards, local staff selection and hiring, joint data controller agreements, etc.)
These procedures set the stage for smooth operations in terms of RCTs’ participants’ recruiting, instructors’ and RAs’ selection and training, experiment execution and data collection and management.
The research team designed all the research tools needed to successfully plan and implement the RCTs around the world. More specifically, the research team designed: 1) a global website (https://www.ideaboosterlab.it/(öffnet in neuem Fenster)) and 6 specific websites (one for each Country, now discontinued) to issue the Call for Applications and proceed with participants’ recruiting; 2) the intervention which comprises different experimental treatments in the form of different versions of a 3 month-training program; the treatments comprise a variety of training materials in English and (where necessary) in the local language; 3) the research protocol which includes variables, measures, surveys, interview structures and coding schemes; 4) the local instructors’ and research assistants’ selection criteria and procedure; 5) the train-the-local instructor-program to train local instructors to administer the treatments at the six different locations; 6) the train-the-local research assistant-program to train local research assistants to collect the data from participants; 7) the procedures for experimental power calculation and randomization procedures; 8) the data collection and management procedures, including reliability tests; 9) the piloting of the intervention; 10) the data cleaning and management procedures.
All the documents are available upon request. The research team is currently cleaning and analyzing the data, as well as writing up the results in papers. It is also working on making the dataset from the six RCTs publicly available.
Overall, the research program has involved over eight hundred startups, a dozen researchers, eighteen instructors and over sixty research assistants around the world.
1. developed the theoretical models, hypotheses and predictions about how the adoption of the scientific approach impact entrepreneurial decision making.
2. designed and conducted six Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) at six different locations around the world, leveraging on the following local partnering universities: a) Bocconi, Milan, Italy; b) RSM, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; c) Bayes, London, UK; d) UniAndes, Bogotà, Colombia; e) ESADE, Barcelona, Spain; f) MCC, Chennai, India). The RCTs follow the same, standardized experimental design with the except of the one in Chennai, India, where local conditions required to move from a 3-arm to a 2-arm experimental design. The RCTs were conducted between 2021 and early 2024 and are now completed in terms of execution of the intervention and data collection. Each RCT lasted on average 15 months.
3. Started to clean the data and organized the dataset;
4. Started to analyze the data;
5. Started to write papers.
Since the experimental design is the same and the experimental protocol standardized across five of the six locations, analyses are currently being conducted both at the disaggregated and aggregated level.
Preliminary to rolling out the RCTs at the six locations, the research team set up three sets of procedures regarding:
1. Ethics scrutiny and approval (all the RCTs have been approved by the relevant Ethical Committee and/or IRB or equivalent)
2. RCTs’ preregistration on the AEA RCT registry (AEARCTR-0008945)
3. Partnership agreements with the local institutions involved (including ethics, quality and safety standards, local staff selection and hiring, joint data controller agreements, etc.)
These procedures set the stage for smooth operations in terms of RCTs’ participants’ recruiting, instructors’ and RAs’ selection and training, experiment execution and data collection and management.
The research team designed all the research tools needed to successfully plan and implement the RCTs around the world. More specifically, the research team designed: 1) a global website (https://www.ideaboosterlab.it/(öffnet in neuem Fenster)) and 6 specific websites (one for each Country, now discontinued) to issue the Call for Applications and proceed with participants’ recruiting; 2) the intervention which comprises different experimental treatments in the form of different versions of a 3 month-training program; the treatments comprise a variety of training materials in English and (where necessary) in the local language; 3) the research protocol which includes variables, measures, surveys, interview structures and coding schemes; 4) the local instructors’ and research assistants’ selection criteria and procedure; 5) the train-the-local instructor-program to train local instructors to administer the treatments at the six different locations; 6) the train-the-local research assistant-program to train local research assistants to collect the data from participants; 7) the procedures for experimental power calculation and randomization procedures; 8) the data collection and management procedures, including reliability tests; 9) the piloting of the intervention; 10) the data cleaning and management procedures.
All the documents are available upon request. The research team is currently cleaning and analyzing the data, as well as writing up the results in papers. It is also working on making the dataset from the six RCTs publicly available.
Overall, the research program has involved over eight hundred startups, a dozen researchers, eighteen instructors and over sixty research assistants around the world.
Progress will be made along four dimensions and with the following expected results.
First, once data are cleaned, a dataset including data, glossary, readme and do files will be made publicly available and accessible to researchers around the world.
Second, the training curriculum and materials representing the intervention of the RCTs will also made available to eligible educational institutions.
Third, the pipeline of papers based on the project’s research will be widened and thickened. Compared to the current state, we plan to write four additional papers that will be submitted for presentation at the major management and economics conferences. We also plan to submit four more papers to major management and economics journals.
Fourth, the results of the research will be disseminated online through the social media and a purposely designed website. They will be disseminated also through presentations at conferences, workshops and seminars.
First, once data are cleaned, a dataset including data, glossary, readme and do files will be made publicly available and accessible to researchers around the world.
Second, the training curriculum and materials representing the intervention of the RCTs will also made available to eligible educational institutions.
Third, the pipeline of papers based on the project’s research will be widened and thickened. Compared to the current state, we plan to write four additional papers that will be submitted for presentation at the major management and economics conferences. We also plan to submit four more papers to major management and economics journals.
Fourth, the results of the research will be disseminated online through the social media and a purposely designed website. They will be disseminated also through presentations at conferences, workshops and seminars.