Why Small and Growing Businesses Should Lead the Researchers—Not the Other Way Around
by Heather Esper, Director, Impact Measurement & Managment
All too often, global development research hinges on the interest of researchers, rather than the knowledge needs of small business people and, most importantly, their impacted communities. The actual methods for data collection and analysis are also kept within the research domain, leaving an entrepreneur or small business manager with plenty of reports, but no practical tools for continuing to collect and use data themselves.
The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a global network working to advance emerging market entrepreneurship, recently partnered with the International Development Research Centre to support a set of partnerships explicitly designed to help small and growing businesses (SGBs) improve their own approaches to collecting and using data on gender to increase their impact. These projects were more than an exercise in changing perspectives. Instead, we collectively and purposefully attempted to “flip the script” toward empowering business owners and managers with the agency and tools to harness their data—not for the researcher’s benefit, but for their own business and community development.
