Recommendation 5: Consistent with ongoing World Bank Group knowledge reform, the FPD network at the World Bank needs to develop cost-effective and easily accessible procedures for codifying and disseminating information on project design and implementation experiences from its work on innovation and entrepreneurship. Similar efforts should be developed and implemented by IFC and at MIGA.abc
World Bank sector and theme codes do not use innovation, entrepreneurship, or related terms to report on Bank activities. Nor does IFC and MIGA have a system that officially records or tracks innovation. The World Bank Group's support to innovation and entrepreneurship has not been tracked very well and experience has not been shared systematically.
An IEG survey indicates that Bank Group staff develops and use tacit knowledge on innovation and entrepreneurship in the course of their work, but this knowledge does not adequately flow within and across the Bank Group, resulting in organizational inefficiencies and limiting the effectiveness of Bank Group support to clients. Team leaders indicated that it is quite challenging to capture best practices because there are no mechanisms or time allocated to extract and transmit lessons from operations over time.
WB: Agree.
Consistent with the overall approach to knowledge management emerging from the WBG change process, the Strategic Framework will explore ways on how best to identify and disseminate lessons of experience within each institution and across the three institutions of the WBG.
In IFC, this will be informed by its approach in global knowledge sharing.
Since the establishment of the ITE Global Practice, an effort has been launched to track more systematically WB projects (lending, technical assistance, and Reimbursable Advisory Services) supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.
In addition, as noted under recommendation 3, the IPP will provide a depository of knowledge on the "how to" of innovation policy and a collaborative space for users (inter alia WBG staff, policy makers, practitioners and analysts) to exchange knowledge.
Action 5: (WBG) Consider a cost-effective and comprehensive framework to identify and disseminate lessons of experience within each institution and across the three institutions of the WBG as part of the Strategic Framework.
Indicator: A cost-effective and comprehensive knowledge sharing framework
Baseline: Fragmented Knowledge sharing framework
Target: A cost-effective and comprehesive knowledge sharing framework established
Timeline: FY15
[see also Actions #4 (WB), #5 (IFC), and #6 (MIGA)]
The I&E team introduced a formal strategy that includes a knowledge agenda. While it does not explicitly target the entire WBG or entire I&E space, IEG considers one development as a significant step towards achieving this action. That is SME agenda.
The I&E unit led the development of the "SME Growth and Productivity Action Plan FY16-19,"
and started to conduct diagnostics and leverage potential integrated solutions for clients through collaboration among GPs and IFC. SME Launchpad, one part of this initiative, aims at generating a number of innovative SME support. This will likely decrease fragmented knowledge generation and enable dissemination of lessons learned at the WBG. IEG recognizes this effort and rates the action as Substantial. However, this action is not complete, and to achieve this action fully these types of initiatives are needed to be broaden to other areas in I&E space.
The I&E unit introduced a formal strategy to optimize the dissemination of lessons of experience to inform the design of policy instruments and operational tools. In alignment with the three focus areas identified under the I&E knowledge and learning strategy the following was completed:
- Internal knowledge competition identified and supported development of four studies by I&E teams into 1. Operationalizing Lessons from Women Entrepreneurship Programs 2. Promoting Innovation through Corporate-Startup Collaboration: Guide to Task Teams 3. Understanding Technology Diffusion and Adoption in Developing Countries in the Age of Industry 4.0: Challenges, Opportunities and Policy responses and 4. SME capacity building programs: Do market linkages drive better SME Upgrading?
- Internal knowledge portfolio was actively monitored and managed in order to ensure timely completion of knowledge and learning deliverables as well as capturing and disseminating outputs through the Innovation Policy Platform. Specifically IPP has disseminated new knowledge products for Inclusive Innovation CTP In-briefs Innovation Policy instrument guide and City based innovation. The IPP continues to be developed in concert with the OECD and the platform currently has over 4,300 registered users.
- Learning and outreach has provided support to BBLs and other peer learning events, participation in internal and external conferences that enable maximum knowledge exchange and dissemination activities including extensive participation in the T&C Learning Week that has included development and delivery of I&E led training activities and master classes and co-organization of various outward facing conferences such as ICSB Small Business Conference, and NESTA Innovation Growth Lab.
- In partnership with the EFI Chief Economist's office, T&C has completed the preparation of the Innovation Policy flagship report, which is scheduled to be launched at the 2017 Annual Meetings. The preparation of the High Growth Entrepreneurship flagship report is well-advanced and the team aims to publish a set of country background papers in the Policy Research Working Paper series in Q1 FY18.
One of the flagship initiatives of T&C - a joint WB-IFC Global Practice - in the area of disseminating information on project design and implementation experiences is the "SME Launchpad." The SME Launchpad is jointly sponsored by the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice, Finance & Markets Global Practice, and IFC's Cross-Cutting Advisory Services and Financial Institutions Group. It is a competition designed specifically to encourage collaboration across these four departments, and to bring about innovation to enable innovation and SME growth and raise SME productivity particularly in IDA18 countries and especially FCV states. It accomplishes this by providing each winning WBG team with: (1) a small grant for producing proof-of-concept designs that have a high likelihood of being scaled into WB operations or IFC investments and advisory services (2) technical support, coaching, and mentoring from design and subject matter experts and, (3) support to facilitate learning through rigorous results measurement, analysis and dissemination of lessons learned.
Since 2016, the program has supported 19 pilots in 25 countries in 3 cohorts (FY16, FY17 and FY18) and have demonstrated that competitive funding combined with technical support to WBG teams could be a powerful tool for identifying innovative approaches, embedding them in WBG operations, sharing lessons, and scaling results. Pilots that have been implemented through joint WB-IFC teams have worked on improving women-led SMEs access to finance by leveraging Fin-Tech and their performance through GVC integration, piloting innovative matching grant mechanisms to help SMEs recovering from economic shocks, designing WB/IFC global products to support MSMEs in early stage of their life-cycle and innovative approaches like multi-originator SME securitization as a tool to enhance banks' lending capacity and broaden SMEs funding options. Specifically:
(1) WBG teams have a good pool of ideas that address various aspects of the SME agenda. Three competitions organized since FY16 surfaced 104 innovative proposals, out of which 19 received funding for country pilots.
(2) Several pilots have already scaled into WBG operations, replicated in other countries and informed IFC advisory services. FY16 pilot in DRC led to a new family code being enacted in the country and also to a USD 70 million WB lending operation (P160806 - SME Development and Growth Project) that is currently in its preparation stage another pilot in India was replicated in South Africa where the model leveraged for an IFC investment another led to a request for the IFC advisory services in Kenya for pipeline transaction in the construction industry.
(3) The pilots have also led to increased collaboration between WB and IFC teams with implementation of pilots being co-led by WB and IFC teams along with the support from the SME Working Group members integrating competencies and resources from both institutions.
The FY18 SME Launchpad saw a landslide of high quality submissions in the last round, and the number of ideas being generated have tripled every year: there were 8 proposals in FY16, 24 in FY17 and 72 for FY18. This is a demonstration of staff commitment, creativity and expertise, as well as potential growth of the portfolio of SME operations at the WBG in the coming years.
The IPP is a platform that is not specifically cater to the WBG staff. Technically, the Platform can facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration across countries and regions but it is not clear how much this platform is used beyond I&E unit in the WBG. The WB is working on "innovation flagship" and "high growth entrepreneurship" that intends to develop a series of guides on the major innovation policy instruments (including descriptions, the evidence base for their effectiveness, examples, and advice on when and how to consider their use). This may potentially facilitate knowledge and learning among the GPs, CCSAs, IFC and MIGA.
The I&E unit has taken a series of steps to improve the dissemination of lessons of experience to inform the design of policy instruments and operational tools. These include:
1. Launch of the Innovation Policy Platform as a tool for disseminating best-practice on the development and implementation of innovation policy. The Innovation Policy Platform continues to be developed in concert with the OECD and the platform currently has over 2,600 members.
2. Preparation of two flagship reports on innovation policy and high growth entrepreneurship. The reports aim to generate new knowledge in the areas of public policy support for innovation and support to high growth firms and will be delivered as a series of outputs including detailed guides on policy options for policymakers (drawing from a global inventory of policies as well as a summary of available impact evaluations). The innovation policy flagship is well advanced and will have a mid-term review in September 2016. The concept note for the high growth entrepreneurship flagship was approved in April 2016 and the team aims to deliver a first draft of the report in FY17.
3. Completion of a comprehensive mapping of I& activities throughout the WBG portfolio, to inform management and TTLs about the range and scope of I&E activities throughout the institution, and to effectively and systematically track WB projects (lending, technical assistance, and Reimbursable Advisory Services) supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.
The IPP is a platform that is open to everybody in the development. However, this platform does not specifically cater to the WBG staff.
Technically, the Platform can facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration across countries and regions and it helps WBG TTLs disseminate operational experience. In addition to the knowledge repository that includes WBG publications the IPP includes collaborative space where TTLs gather and discretionally disseminate content. From a practical use perspective, the use of this platform by the WBG institutions/staff are not known or tracked.
In parallel, the WB is working on "innovation flagship" that intends to develop a series of guides on the major innovation policy instruments (including descriptions, the evidence base for their effectiveness, examples, and advice on when and how to consider their use). This may potentially facilitate knowledge and learning among the GPs, CCSAs, IFC and MIGA.
The Innovation Policy Platform has been established and is developing as a tool for diseminating best-practice on the development and implemenation of innovation policy . Separately, the newly integrated Innovation and Entrepreneurship unit within T&C has a priority on identifying and then addressing knowledge and experience gaps on innovation policy. It has initiaited two flagship projects (one on growth entrepreneurship, the other on firm level innovation) that both have significant empirical elements, and is actively exploring how best to disseminate best practice and experience both through the IPP and through other mechanisms. Although many of the knowledge and data gaps have been identified and are being addressed, the development of the innovation and entrepreneurship Strategic Framework is expected to identify remaining gaps and outline how the WGB will address them.