Standard business training programsaimto boost the incomes of the millions of self-employed business owners in developing countries by teaching basic financial and marketing practices, yet the ...impacts of such programs are mixed. We tested whether a psychology-based personal initiative training approach, which teaches a proactive mindset and focuses on entrepreneurial behaviors, could have more success. A randomized controlled trial in Togo assigned microenterprise owners to a control group (n = 500), a leading business training program (n = 500), or a personal initiative training program (n = 500). Four follow-up surveys tracked outcomes for firms over 2 years and showed that personal initiative training increased firm profits by 30%, compared with a statistically insignificant 11% for traditional training. The training is cost-effective, paying for itself within 1 year.
We tested whether a structural intervention combining savings-led microfinance and HIV prevention components would achieve enhanced reductions in sexual risk among women engaging in street-based sex ...work in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, compared with an HIV prevention intervention alone.
Between November 2011 and August 2012, we randomized 107 eligible women who completed baseline assessments to either a 4-session HIV sexual risk reduction intervention (HIVSRR) alone (n=50) or a 34-session HIVSRR plus a savings-led microfinance intervention (n=57). At 3- and 6-month follow-up assessments, participants reported unprotected acts of vaginal intercourse with paying partners and number of paying partners with whom they engaged in sexual intercourse in the previous 90 days. Using Poisson and zero-inflated Poisson model regressions, we examined the effects of assignment to treatment versus control condition on outcomes.
At 6-month follow-up, the HIVSRR plus microfinance participants reported significantly fewer paying sexual partners and were more likely to report zero unprotected vaginal sex acts with paying sexual partners.
Findings advance the HIV prevention repertoire for women, demonstrating that risk reduction may be achieved through a structural intervention that relies on asset building, including savings, and alternatives to income from sex work.
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Introduction
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) provides funding to academic researchers and small businesses working in the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and AD‐related dementia (ADRD) fields to help ...commercialize their products. The NIA uses Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards to bridge the funding gap in the diagnostic, therapeutic, and care interventions areas, enabling startups to reach key value inflection points to achieve scientific milestones.
Methods
Only publicly available information is reported. The National Institutes of Health Report Portfolio Online Reporting Tool database and the commercial database Global Data, were used to track the progress of companies that received SBIR or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding from the NIA.
Results
Since 2008, the NIA has awarded $280 million—including $207 million from fiscal year (FY) 2015 to FY 2019—in new small business program awards for AD/ADRD research.
Discussion
NIA seed capital and mentoring programs are critical resources to help small businesses reach key value inflection points and advance their research from concept to commercialization.
Faster Disaster Recovery Elder, Jennifer H; Elder, Samuel F
2019, 2019-03-19, 2019-04-02, 2019.
eBook
Protect your company's finances in the event of a disaster In the face of an environmental or man-made disaster, it's imperative to have a contingency plan that's mapped out your corporation's ...strategy to minimize the impact on the daily functions or life of the corporation. Successful planning not only can limit the damage of an unforeseen disaster but also can minimize daily mishaps—such as the mistaken deletion of files—and increase a business's overall efficiency. Faster Disaster Recovery provides a 10-step approach for business owners on creating a disaster recovery plan (from both natural and man-made events). Each chapter ends with thought-provoking questions that allow business owners to explore their particular situation. * Covers natural events such as earthquakes and floods * Provides guidance on dealing with man-made events such as terrorist attacks * Offers worksheets to make your contingency plans * Includes several examples throughout the book There's no time like the present to develop a business contingency plan—and this book shows you how.
Small and medium enterprise (SME) support programs are a common feature of industrial policy in developing countries, but one whose effectiveness is not well known. Governments are motivated to ...support SMEs both because they make up the majority of industrial enterprises and contribute substantially to GDP, employment and earnings, and because SMEs are thought to be weaker than their larger counterparts. Few governments, however, have evaluated their SME programs rigorously so there is little empirical basis for rational allocation of resources to the well performing programs. The paucity of empirical evidence from rigorous impact evaluations also presents problems for multi-lateral and bilateral donors in deciding whether or not to provide lending or aid for such policy interventions to promote SME development. This study rigorously evaluate SME programs in four Latin American countries to gain insights into which programs perform better than others, and just as important, why. These countries ? Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru ? cover a wide range of enterprise support programs, including training, innovation and technology upgrading, quality control, market development, export promotion and network formation. Broadly comparable panel data on enterprises is used to investigate the net impacts of these SME interventions.
The Journal of Small Business Management is a highly respected journal, which publishes research about small business and entrepreneurship. Using bibliometric analysis, this study presents an ...overview of the major trends and themes in the journal's published content from 1996 to 2019. Over the years, the journal has grown significantly in terms of both publications and citations, with authors from the United States remaining the dominant contributors to the journal. The bibliographic coupling of the articles reveals that entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, family firms, board composition, and internationalization are among the major themes pursued by contributors.
Volume 18 of Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Beingis focused on the stress and well-being related to Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses. This volume focuses on entrepreneurial and small ...business owners' stress, health, and well-being as it relates to personal, work, and success outcomes.
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