This will provide crucial knowledge to help scale gender lens investing in emerging markets to deliver on gender equality.
In collaboration with partners such as CARE, Helium Health, Leap Africa, Pro Mujer, and Villgro Africa, WDI hosted four public sessions during the Glocal Conference — a virtual global event drawing thousands of professionals dedicated to evidence-based decision-making. These sessions, available on YouTube, examine how systems thinking can address healthcare financing gaps, enhance incubators and accelerators through research, and support a just transition to sustainable energy.
Glocal Evaluation Week brings together a diverse array of international organizations, including entrepreneur support groups, regional measurement and evaluation bodies, NGOs, government agencies, academics, researchers, funders, impact investors, policymakers, and students.
“Glocal Evaluation Week creates a powerful exchange of information by being a free conference that is easily accessible by anyone with an internet connection. It reminds us that meaningful change starts with using data to listen, learn, and improve—both in our own communities and across the world,” said Heather Esper, Director of the Performance Measurement and Impact team at WDI. “All four sessions explore how monitoring, evaluation and learning methods can address critical challenges and gaps within the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
WDI sent two leaders with deep expertise in developing enterprises and understanding impact: Rajat Chabba, Senior Director of Innovation and Partnerships (pictured above), and Yaquta Fatehi, Program Manager for Performance Measurement & Impact.
The Sankalp Africa Summit, one of Africa’s largest convenings on entrepreneurship and sustainable development, has become a pivotal platform for visionary entrepreneurs, global investors, and thought leaders driving collaborative action through entrepreneurship. This year, the William Davidson Institute (WDI) joined as a strategic healthcare partner, along with Villgro Africa and other key healthcare stakeholders, for the Nairobi, Kenya gathering.
WDI sent two leaders with deep expertise in developing enterprises and understanding impact: Rajat Chabba, Senior Director of Innovation and Partnerships, and Yaquta Fatehi, Program Manager for Performance Measurement & Impact. They co-hosted an “unconference session” at the summit around the evolving role of incubators and accelerators in global health in emerging markets. The session served as the official launch of new WDI research focused on healthcare accelerators and incubators, in partnership with Villgro Africa. Fatehi described this new effort in the video below:
During the unconference session, WDI focused on better understanding the relevance of healthcare-focused incubators and accelerators in East Africa. The conversation included several enterprise support organizations (ESOs) and incubator and accelerator membership-led organizations focused on ways to support ESOs, grow entrepreneurial ecosystems and build knowledge that propels enterprises forward.
“As an enterprise accelerator and a systems catalyst, WDI believes in listening to the communities, empowering entrepreneurs and enabling systems that are responsive to the needs of the consumers in a sustainable manner,” Chabba said. “As a partner in Sankalp, it was rewarding to engage and advance the dialogue around these critical issues and contribute to the discussion around what is effective for enterprises and investors, and how both can innovate together.”
Chabba also moderated a panel with Maureen Chege with Viya Health, Anushree Banerji with Grand Challenges Canada, and Tyler Nelson of Business Solutions for Health. Chabba asked key questions related to critical challenges faced by enterprise support organizations, lack of catalytic capital within the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the need to address broader ecosystem bottlenecks that range from policy issues to financing to tech transfer challenges.
A major theme of the conference was an increased focus on localization of capital, specifically from African investors to African entrepreneurs, and how to drive and support the localization efforts.
“It is really important to have candid conversations to understand the available resources, data and research needs, power dynamics and strengths and challenges of entrepreneurs, incubators, and accelerators, all key stakeholders of WDI programming,” Fatehi said. “Sankalp Africa creates a safe space and gives us an opportunity to hear from such organizations in an informal setting.”
Since its launch in 2014, the platform has attracted thousands of participants each year, including visionary entrepreneurs, global investors and thought leaders from more than 65 countries.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are vital engines of growth and employment, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Research has shown that gender-inclusive practices can enhance both financial and social outcomes for these businesses.
WDI, in collaboration with DAI and MarketShare Associates (MSA) through USAID’s Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships (MSP) Activity, conducted a series of case studies highlighting how SMEs can achieve “profit with purpose” through women-inclusive business models and operations. WDI’s key role on this project was to calculate the women-inclusive return on investment which included working closely with companies to collect and collate data.
This collection of resources answers the call of the Women-Inclusive Return on Investment Investment (WI-ROI) framework to build the evidence base of ROIs from SMEs in LMICs. The case studies also provide detailed information on how the ROI was calculated to help inform those interested in calculating their own WI-ROI. The learning note and synthesis report offer guidance on selecting and vetting companies, measuring the WI-ROI, and scaling women-inclusive strategies.
These resources aim to equip SMEs with the knowledge and tools needed to implement women-inclusive practices, measure their impact and WI-ROI, and ultimately drive business growth while contributing to gender equality. The team also held a webinar in April 2024 introducing these resources and answering audience questions on the WI-ROI.
We’d love to hear your feedback or answer any questions about these resources; please contact us at WDI-PerformanceMeasurement@umich.edu
WDI collaborated with the CCA Market Strengthening Program to generate learnings from projects supported by Irish Aid. This work entailed collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from projects in CCA’s Venture Catalyst Program and User Insights Lab. The Energy team worked with the PMI team to synthesize findings across projects based on key learning questions.
WDI is supporting the learning objectives of the Clean Cooking Alliance Market Strengthening Program by developing innovative methods to measure the effectiveness of market strengthening interventions. We are providing programmatic and data support, informing programmatic adaptations and pivots, and contributing to knowledge products targeting clean cooking enterprises, funders, policymakers and other stakeholders.
Photo courtesy of the Shell Foundation
Gender lens investing isn’t just about gender equality. It’s also about business. In fact, if you ask many investors propelling these models forward, it’s firstly about business. The problem is, until now, it’s been hard to prove. Historically, investors have relied on anecdotes to demonstrate the power of this approach to investing.
In June 2019, with funding support from The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and USAID, six investors with more than $700 million in assets under management — the AlphaMundi Foundation, Acumen, AHL Venture Partners, Root Capital, SEAF, and Shell Foundation — launched the Gender-Smart Enterprise Assistance Research Coalition (G-SEARCh). The goal of the consortium was to conduct new research in the gender lens investing community, focused on post-investment support provided to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The research project aligns with the William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan’s mission to provide decision makers with the tools of commercial success, which leads to both economic and social progress. WDI participated in the consortium and studied the effects of a relatively new type of gender lens investing strategy: gender smart technical assistance (TA) activities. “There’s a gap in evidence and know-how that holds back other investors and funders from wanting to implement the different types of gender-smart TA engagements,” said Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi, Program Manager for the Performance Measurement and Improvement team at WDI.
The G-SEARCh consortium recently published Business and Social Outcomes of Gender-Smart Technical Assistance Activities in Small and Medium Enterprises: Building the Evidence Base for Gender Lens Investing lays out the findings and lessons learned. It shares data compiled and case studies on companies that received TA support, conclusions and calls to action, and specific steps investors can take to build greater equality and bolster business results.
There’s more to gender lens investing than simply investing in women-owned or women-led businesses or gender-forward companies. New strategies include promoting gender diversity within the investment firm and implementing a gender lens to the investment cycle. An additional strategy is the design and implementation of gender-smart TA within portfolio companies. WDI’s work focused on the outcomes of embedding equality and inclusiveness across operations. WDI also considered the costs of implementing such TA activities. (The data limitations preclude strong conclusions — most companies in the study could not provide in-depth cost information due to the burden of data collection and long-term outcomes could not be measured due to research time constraints). However, the data that were gathered suggest that there were benefits. Additionally, 86% of the companies continue to use the TAs even after the close of investor funding suggests the benefits outweigh the costs for the vast majority of companies.
The challenge and advantage of a TA strategy is that it needs to be customized for it to work effectively. An experience must closely match the profile, needs and goals of the organization. WDI studied the impacts of internal strategies, like HR policies and management mentoring programs, external strategies, such as marketing to more women, and a mix of both, such as stakeholder training and sex-dissaggregated data collection and analysis. Each activity led to a different result.
For example, in one WDI case study, a financial services company in Latin America found low utilization of its non-financial products by women. The firm responded by creating a targeted promotional program to share the benefits of a medical and dental assistance product with women clients. It developed social media messaging, completed credit officer training and sent out customized information. As a result, it saw an 8% increase in women using this product.
TA activities also can enhance brand loyalty, improve workplace culture, push for formalized commitments to gender equality, increase sales numbers, and attract new funding. It largely depends on objectives, impact pathways and implementation strategies, Fatehi said. In the 21 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) studied by WDI, 86% of the organizations reported improved brand loyalty from customers and external partners and 38% reported higher sales numbers after utilizing these tools.
Businesses are excited about the investment opportunities that come from participation. “We talk about this program with potential funders and investors,” reported one SME management team. “They are keen to hear that we are promoting gender-transformative learning and development programs, which is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of their confidence in investing in us.”
While business boosts rank high in the reasoning for pursuing gender lens investing and TA activities, there are compelling social effects that follow these economic benefits. Of the 21 companies in the sample, 71% of SMEs reported increased pride for the company among its stakeholders (customers, producers, distributors and/or employees); 67% of SMEs reported increased skills and knowledge among their stakeholders.
Through TA programming, Nova Coffee, a company in Rwanda that sources its coffee from small-scale local farmers, decided to make significant efforts to train women coffee farmers on mitigating and adapting to climate change effects. With those offerings, over 90% of the 120 women farmers surveyed in the case study gained access to critical agricultural training. There also was a major shift in how they interacted with climate change.
Before the sessions, 49% believed climate change rarely impacted their farming and 77% were taking no steps to change their practices. After the program, 96% of the farmers changed their farming practices around climate change. With another similar coffee company in the region, as it became clearer that women could participate in the local coffee production industry with their improved abilities, child marriage in the area began to drop. The impacts of these efforts rippled through the lives of these women and their children.
“To help women farmers is to help the nation because women are detail-oriented in their business; they take care of their children and community, and more so than the men. When you give the money to women, they will use it on their families and help their families to be resilient,” a Nova Coffee representative shared.
This study not only explored the potential power of gender-smart TA practices, it also compiled a list of best practices for TA implementers that would increase the probability of success, including:
[Find more of these tips and insights in the full report, along with case studies, a toolkit and other resources.}
Despite the burgeoning evidence, there’s a lot more room for study into this area. The research pool will benefit from a better understanding of the monetary and human resource costs, as well as the long-term impacts of the practice, said Fatehi. Such research would help to analyze the net benefits of TA and the correlations between business and social outcomes further highlighting possible benefits to the businesses’ profitability. This could then increase the likelihood and scale of adoption of gender-smart TA by other investors, funders and businesses.
“We haven’t answered every single question,” said Fatehi. “We’re just scratching the surface and giving people confidence that there can be social and business outcomes from well-designed gender- smart technical assistance when companies and investors implement and assess this strategy.”
Note: Please watch the recording of the talk below.
Traditional surveys and questionnaires can be imprecise methods for understanding the needs and motivations of low-income and vulnerable populations. In a Feb. 17 virtual discussion, acclaimed author and entrepreneur Daryl Collins will explore how technology can help researchers, nonprofits and businesses engage and serve these communities around the world.
During the talk, Collins will share examples of how her company, Decodis, is using technology to collect and analyze qualitative data in a more scalable and lower-cost manner. Collins will share examples of collecting data using WhatsApp audio responses to understand changes in gender norms and assessing Google Play reviews of digital lending apps in India. In both examples, Collins will share how she and her team used Natural Language Processing (NLP) – a common market tool – to detect key topics and phrases to unpack the meaning of the responses. She’ll also share how she and her team analyzed speech signals (such as pitch, duration of responses and voice modulation) in the audio files to determine whether the respondent was engaged in their responses, when the respondent was unsure, and when the respondent gave them a “canned response” — i.e., telling the researchers what he/she thought the researchers wanted to hear.
The William Davidson Institute and the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions are co-sponsoring the talk, which begins at 5 p.m. is free and open to the public.
Daryl Collins
As a pioneer working at the intersection of finance and human vulnerability, Collins has built a broad portfolio of work with financial service providers, foundations, bilateral donors and governments. Collins’ work is grounded in a deep understanding of the financial lives of individuals. She is the author of the ground-breaking “Portfolios of the Poor” and creator of the Financial Diaries, a research tool used in over 10 countries, including South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania.
People living at or near poverty levels are less likely to speak their minds when responding to surveys and other efforts to collect data. This hesitancy is understandable, but it also creates a real challenge for researchers, enterprises and policymakers to better understand their needs, said Heather Esper, Director of WDI’s Performance Measurement & Improvement group.
“Daryl Collins is truly a pioneer in collecting and analyzing data to better understand the lives of low-income and vulnerable individuals at scale,” Esper said. “The qualitative methods she uses shed more light on what individuals are saying by accounting for how they say it.”
Collins recently established Decodis with a team of linguists and Natural Language Processing data scientists. Decodis seeks to advance scale and robustness in qualitative research techniques by providing tech-led consumer research methods that are insightful, scalable and low cost. The Decodis team is currently working on a range of projects across a breadth of countries, languages and sectors to explore new ways of both collecting and analyzing open-end response data.
Collins holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from New York University. She spent the last decade as Managing Director and CEO of BFA, a niche financial inclusion consulting practice with offices in Boston, New York, Nairobi, Accra, New Delhi and Medellin.
Study after study has shown that investing in women living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has a strong ripple effect. When women earn more money, either as entrepreneurs or employees, they tend to place more of their economic gains back into their children’s education and health, and also strengthen local economies.
However, there is far less evidence on how gender-focused investing and gender-diverse teams within businesses lead to better financial and social outcomes, and how to go about achieving those goals.
This is the aim of the Gender-Smart Enterprise Assistance Research Coalition (G-SEARCh) which includes six impact investors: AlphaMundi Foundation, Acumen, SEAF, Root Capital, AHL Venture Partners, and Shell Foundation. Impact investors seek social and/or environmental gains in addition to financial returns on their investments. The group came together with a shared goal of supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets to incorporate gender across their respective business models. In addition to providing direct investments, these impact investors are also providing subsidized technical assistance focused on promoting gender equity as a core business principle to these SMEs. The G-SEARCh consortium also seeks to build the evidence base and business case for gender lens investing and this approach.
As the research partner behind the 18-month project, WDI’s Performance Measurement & Improvement (PMI) team is exploring the financial and social performance results of gender-smart technical assistance (TA) provided to these SMEs. These practices can range from internal focused interventions such as recruiting more women employees, refining policies and procedures to skills development, as well as a host of external practices such as conducting market research to better understand women customer needs, and adapting product and/or service offerings to women customers.
“The most exciting part of this research is uncovering the possible links between social and financial performance,” said Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi, program manager with the PMI team. “We want to better understand if gender inclusivity through technical assistance leads to improved financial performance for these businesses—and subsequently improved returns on investments.”
The project focuses on 29 SMEs across multiple LMICs in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These businesses work in a variety of sectors, including microfinance and financial inclusion, food and agriculture, and renewable energy and climate. WDI will investigate the outcomes of gender-smart TA provided to SMEs supported by their investors. To do this, the team is conducting extensive interviews and surveys to gather data with the additional goal of strengthening interventions. WDI also will investigate the effectiveness of different approaches and tools that the G-SEARCh consortium members are deploying to incorporate gender-smart practices across their respective investees. The research will take into account existing data gathered by investors and SMEs to reduce the burden of data collection.
“The long-term goal of this research is twofold: First, to provide SME leaders with the knowledge and tools to become more inclusive, gender-equitable, and profitable,” said Christine Roddy, Executive Director at AlphaMundi Foundation, which is the lead administrator of G-SEARCh. “Second, we hope to provide tested tools, approaches and frameworks to impact investors as they allocate resources to gender-smart interventions across their portfolios.”
This will provide crucial knowledge to help scale gender lens investing in emerging markets to deliver on gender equality.
WDI’s team is working closely with G-SEARCh partners to develop a gender lens investment toolkit along with multiple case studies to illustrate various interventions and analysis. These details will be summarized in a report capturing all the insights and recommendations, including the surveys and frameworks. The report, scheduled to be released in late 2021, will be made public so other investors can apply the knowledge toward their respective investment and business practices.
The research fits within WDI’s mission of helping the key players within any business ecosystem understand and utilize the tools of commercial success. The G-SEARCh consortium is supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Powering Agriculture Investment Alliance, which is funded by USAID, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, GIZ in Germany and Duke Energy.
“The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities, and women and girls in developing countries are the most affected,” said Carolina Robino, Senior Program Specialist at IDRC. “This is timely research that will allow the impact investing industry to learn and share the most effective ways to integrate gender into SMEs. This will provide crucial knowledge to help scale gender lens investing in emerging markets to deliver on gender equality.”
Another intended outcome is to provide best practices and lessons learned to SMEs as they seek to become more inclusive and gender-equitable, as well as to impact investors, who increasingly see the industry as a mechanism for improving gender equality. In its 2020 industry report, the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), which includes nearly 300 investors, reported the global impact investing market exceeded $715 billion.
Notice: The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors. This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.
This article was originally published on NextBillion, WDI’s affiliated media site.
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.
As part of this process, we considered several questions relevant to SGBs that are collaborating with researchers to generate data on their work and impact. We’ll explore these questions below.
What should an SGB consider before leading an engagement with a researcher?
Before engaging with a researcher, SGBs should have a strong sense of their main goal and audience for the research. For instance, is it to inform decision-making, or to understand and share their impact? Is it to better frame their storytelling—both to inform existing stakeholders and possibly to attract new investors and/or consumers?
Often SGBs have multiple goals for data collection. While that is understandable, multiple goals can compete with one another and result in outcomes that do not fully meet any particular goal or resonate with any particular audience. A clearly articulated principal goal for data collection will help an SGB select a research partner, and set clear expectations with that partner for the type of guidance that will be most helpful in accomplishing their shared goal(s).
How relevant is a researcher’s advice to SGBs?
When an SGB leads a collaboration, researchers need to be prepared to adapt their recommendations based on the SGB’s needs and realities. While researchers may be used to applying rigorous methods in a particular way, when they place an SGB’s needs at the forefront, that approach may need adjustment. In such situations, it is helpful for the researcher to work closely with the SGB to adapt data collection to the SGB’s reality – while maintaining as much rigor as possible. While providing such guidance, researchers should explain if the adaptations will create any limitations on how the data can be used or what can be concluded from it.
For researchers’ advice to be relevant, it is also important for them to be proactive in asking questions related to the context, and to clarify any assumptions. After all, SGBs are not in the business of research, and therefore may not recognize the value of information that’s relevant to a researcher. Although SGBs are incredibly busy, it is important that their managers conduct regular meetings to provide updates and changes to the research plans. For their part, researchers should also proactively assess if and how conditions related to the research may have changed since the last conversation.
Researchers must also bring themselves closer to the areas where the SGBs work, whether that is through travel or through virtual means. Frequently, research methods are developed using desk-based work, literature and methodology review, or strategic planning sessions. But the simple act of attempting to implement these methods in the field often shatters pre-conceived notions about how realistic such methods are in the first place. Indeed, testing tools and methods before collecting data is important, as it allows researchers to adapt them to the context in order to collect useful data. For instance, in one project we supported, the team discovered a disconnect between theoretical ideas about how easily research tools could be applied, and the actual reality and context of the SGB. Recognizing this early on helped the research partners design more flexibility and validate those tools in the field.
What are some of the challenges of researcher and SGB collaborations?
Without a well-established partnership, developing a new researcher and SGB engagement will likely take more time and resources than either party expects. Both parties should anticipate spending additional time on project administration throughout the engagement.
It’s easy for things to get “lost in translation” across different national and organizational cultures. This issue is compounded when conversations involve technical language associated with research, and exacerbated when partnerships are new and communication is reliant upon e-mail, WhatsApp and other text messaging platforms. Confusion over of roles and responsibilities will almost certainly arise, much of which will not be fully anticipated. Sometimes prioritizing live voice or video calls, even when schedules are busy, can preempt or clear up misunderstandings before they solidify into conflicts.
Furthermore, when the partnership requires data collection from the local community, external researchers are unlikely to have the existing relationships and social capital of an SGB. It is important for the SGB to work with the researchers to ensure that data is collected in a way that is comfortable and respectful for community members and their cultural norms, to avoid losing trust with the community.
Are SGB-led research collaborations worth this extra effort?
Yes! These engagements can take more resources (including time), and some individuals within the SGB may not initially buy into the research process. But once the engagement concludes, most stakeholders see the value of the data gathered and are interested in continuing or even building upon the data collection processes. Indeed, in one of our projects, an SGB owner realized that the additional resources required to collect impact data from women in the coffee value chain (such as women who harvest, thresh, roast or work as baristas) yielded the added benefit of improving their understanding of these women and the challenges they face. As a result, the company (Gente del Futuro, based in Colombia) is seeking to develop new training efforts to improve the value chain. Researchers can also gain value from SGB partnerships, through field validation of their methods and being exposed to real-world implementation challenges.
How can SGBs maintain the momentum after the end of an engagement?
For busy SGBs, it can be frustrating to have piecemeal engagement with researchers on fragmented projects. To create continuity of implementation, such that researchers can further build their data collection efforts and help guide SGBs as they make decisions based on the data gathered, it is worth considering a long-term relationship with a particular research organization or individual. In order to build on the success of an engagement, researchers and SGBs can partner on the dissemination of toolkits, learnings or other project outputs through webinars or other events.
Moving research tools out of the strictly academic domain and into the hands of SGBs and other practitioners requires a spirit of patience and collaboration. But when everyone commits to the undertaking, we know the effort will lead to long-term and impactful improvement. But even more importantly, flipping the narrative and putting the power to drive research in the hands of SGBs and on-the-ground actors can enable these businesses to better meet the needs of the communities they serve.
Heather Esper is the Director of the Performance Measurement and Improvement team at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
Additional contributors to this article include: Vava Angwenyi, co-Founder and Director of Gente Del Futuro; Monica Cuba, Head of Communication at Practical Action; Matthew Guttentag, Research and Impact Director at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs; and Mallory St. Claire, Impact Analyst at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.
Photo courtesy of Gente del Futuro.
A worker with Chakipi Acceso Peru. Image courtesy of Chakipi.
For over 10 years, the Performance Measurement and Improvement (PMI) team at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan has been using robust monitoring and evaluation approaches to measure results and generate value for businesses and their stakeholders.
Whether we are working with the largest network of micro-distributors in Latin America or a multi-national business in the apparel industry, our goal is to meaningfully engage our partners in the measurement and learning process. We want to make data collection valuable for participants and data findings actionable for decision-makers at all levels of a business, organization or program.
We believe such work should be shared and include practical strategies for applying research to improve performance and generate social impact. That’s why we’ve teamed up with MIT D-Lab to write a Lean Research case study, “Positive Change Through Actionable Metrics.” Lean Research is an approach to improve the practice of data collection involving people and communities in development and humanitarian contexts. (For more information on foundations of the Lean Research approach, check out this three-part blog series on NextBillion.net.
As defined by MIT D-Lab, Lean Research is driven by four principles of good research practice:
Our team’s case study covers how we followed the Lean Research approach and applied each of the four principles to our work with three separate social enterprises. Each of these businesses wanted to strengthen their ability to collect accurate data and lead their own evaluation efforts. As a result of the work, leadership from the three enterprises gained a clearer understanding of how to measure changes in the well-being of the low-income women they work with. They also learned the importance of using both business and social indicators to improve operations.
“Thanks to this process, we were able to review the way we collect data, and create a data collection manual and survey templates for each business model [we have],” said a pilot participant from Chakipi Acceso Peru, one of the businesses in our research.
So far, MIT D-Lab has produced three such cases, which you can find here. Each case describes an example of Lean Research and discusses its results and implications for development work globally. A revised version of the Lean Research Field Guide is expected to be released soon (WDI was a contributor to that work as well!)
We plan to create more cases and practical examples of how the Lean Research framework can be applied. We’re also proud to be able to contribute to what is a robust and growing community of evaluations practitioners. Indeed, we’re always looking to work with businesses that are putting Lean Research at the forefront of their measurement goals.
Want to learn more about the work mentioned in the WDI Lean Research case study? Check out the project description on our website or read the full WDI Impact Report: Positive Change Through Actionable Metrics.
Rebecca Baylor is an Evaluation Consultant with the WDI Performance Measurement and Improvement team.