The Innovation Growth Lab is a global collaboration of governments, foundations and researchers, led by Nesta, that develops and tests different approaches to support innovation, entrepreneurship and growth.

We work with partners from the public and academic sectors. We work with policymakers to help them increase the impact of their innovation policies and programmes by making them more experimental and evidence-based. We also fund researchers to run randomised controlled trials in the field. Despite the importance of innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship for economic growth, there is still too little evidence on how best to support these policies.

Why?

€150 billion is spent every year on innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth support programmes in Europe alone, yet there is little credible evidence on what works, and what doesn't.

Despite the importance of innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship to spur economic development, there is still too little evidence on how best to support these policies.

The Innovation Growth Lab believes that a more experimental approach to innovation and growth policy is needed. We want to trial new instruments and evaluate them more rigorously. This involves making much more use of randomised controlled trials to find out what works and what doesn’t, an approach that has been successfully applied in other fields such as development economics, health and education.

The world has shifted, and so have the opportunities and tools that policymakers have at their disposal to improve their own countries’ innovation performance. We cannot assume that the same old instruments continue to be the best tools to support innovation and growth in these times of rapid change.

What are we doing?

IGL is a global collaboration that enables, supports, undertakes and disseminates high impact research that uses randomised controlled trials to improve the design of the programmes and institutions that help make our economies more innovative and entrepreneurial.

We undertake a range of activities to help us deliver our mission:

  • Running trials: We work with our partners (other public and private organisations) and innovative companies to identify new opportunities for trials, and provide tailored support to develop and run these trials in collaboration with researchers in the IGL Research Network.
  • Funding trials: We run the annual IGL Grants Programme funded by Nesta, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Argidius Foundation, to provide grant funding for randomised controlled trials. Our competitive and bottom-up approach identifies and funds promising trials worldwide, encouraging more researchers and organisations to get into this space.
  • Promoting wider adoption of trials: We advocate the need to improve the evidence base on innovation and growth policy, and showcase the value of randomised controlled trials to encourage wider adoption.
  • Capacity building: We run workshops for policymakers and researchers at organisations across the globe.
  • Building and connecting communities: We bring together researchers working on randomised controlled trials in this field through the IGL Research Network, and play a matching and brokerage role to help them connect with our growing network of partner organisations open to adopting randomisation in their programmes.
  • Convening: we host an annual Global Conference, which brings together senior policymakers, practitioners and researchers from across the globe to explore future innovation and entrepreneurship policies. This year, we’re hosting IGL2019 in Berlin.
  • Creating useful resources: We improve the knowledge base and develop best practice on how to run randomised controlled trials in this space. We learn when they work and when they don’t (and therefore when to use and not use them), and we create useful resources to reduce the challenges faced by organisations interested in running RCTs.

Disseminating lessons: We collate the evidence emerging from randomised controlled trials worldwide (see our trials database), and translate it into actionable insights that are useful for both policymakers and practitioners. We disseminate our findings through presentations, conferences, webinar series and publications.

If you would like to find out more about how we could collaborate, please visit our website.

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Project partners

Team

Albert Bravo-Biosca

Albert Bravo-Biosca

Albert Bravo-Biosca

Director, Innovation Growth Lab

Albert is Director of the Innovation Growth Lab.

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Hugo Cuello

Hugo Cuello

Hugo Cuello

Researcher, Innovation Growth Lab

Hugo is a Researcher for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL), based in Nesta’s Research, Analysis and Policy team.

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Meg Doherty

Meg Doherty

Meg Doherty

Assistant Programme Manager, Innovation Growth Lab

Meg is an Assistant Programme Manager in the Innovation Growth Lab.

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Triin Edovald

Triin Edovald

Triin Edovald

Director of Evidence and Experimentation

Triin was the director of Nesta’s Evidence and Experimentation team.

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Teo Firpo

Teo Firpo

Teo Firpo

Senior Researcher, Innovation Growth Lab

Teo is a Senior Researcher for the Innovation Growth Lab in Nesta’s Research, Analysis and Policy unit.

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James Phipps

James Phipps

James Phipps

Deputy Director, Innovation Growth Lab

James is the Deputy Director for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) based in Nesta’s Research, Analysis and Policy team.

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Lou-Davina Stouffs

Lou-Davina Stouffs

Lou-Davina Stouffs

Senior Progamme Manager, Innovation Growth Lab

Lou-Davina was a Research and Programme Manager for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) in Nesta's Research, Analysis and Policy unit.

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Nyangala Zolho

Nyangala Zolho

Nyangala Zolho

Policy Learning Designer, Innovation Growth Lab

Nyangala was a policy learning designer for the Innovation Growth Lab’s (IGL) policy team. She helped IGL partners and the wider policy community to share and learn from policy ideas.

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Layla Gemmell

Layla Gemmell

Layla Gemmell

Operations Manager, Innovation Growth Lab

Layla is Operations Manager for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) .

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Alex Glennie

Alex Glennie

Alex Glennie

Senior Policy Manager

Alex is a Senior Policy Manager in the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

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Stella Rosen

Stella Rosen

Stella Rosen

Assistant Programme Manager, Innovation Growth Lab

Stella was the assistant programme manager for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

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Eszter Czibor

Eszter Czibor

Eszter Czibor

Principal Researcher, Innovation Growth Lab

Eszter is Principal Researcher for the Innovation Growth Lab in Nesta’s Research, Analysis and Policy unit.

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Rob Fuller

Rob Fuller

Rob Fuller

Evaluation Manager, Innovation Growth Lab

Rob is responsible for working with project teams, funders and researchers to deliver high-quality evaluations and to make sure that the findings are used to inform policy.

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Charlotte Reypens

Charlotte Reypens

Charlotte Reypens

Senior Policy Researcher, Innovation Growth Lab

Charlotte carries out research projects to understand how startups and entrepreneurship can be supported across Europe.

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Edoardo Trimarchi

Edoardo Trimarchi

Edoardo Trimarchi

Policy Lead, Innovation Growth Lab

Edoardo Trimarchi is Policy Lead for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).

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