The Social Enterprise @ Goizueta program at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School has partnered with the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) to launch a study of global accelerators. Called the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI), it aims to perform a comprehensive analysis and market assessment of business accelerators. Randall Kempner, ANDE executive director, announced the new initiative on July 25th at the Annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) during a moderated session on entrepreneurship.
Despite their growing presence in countries around the world, very little research has been performed to understand early-stage development in accelerators and accelerators’ effects on their resident companies. This is especially true of accelerators in developing markets. The GALI partnership–a collaboration between the U.S. Global Development Lab at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Lemelson Foundation, the Omidyar Network and the Argidius Foundation–is designed to fill that knowledge gap.
GALI will build on previous work done by the Entrepreneurship Database program at Emory University (EDp@Emory), which has studied more than 60 accelerators and accelerator programs and more than 3,500 enterprises. With $2.3 million in a combination of public and private funding, GALI will expand upon that work by collecting data on more than 10,000 firms from all over the world over the next three years.
“We’re delighted leaders from the academic, international development and philanthropy worlds are coming together to take action and further strengthen business communities by ensuring careful investigation of and innovation for accelerator programs worldwide,” Kempner said in a statement.
“Hundreds of these support programs for entrepreneurs have emerged over the past few years, and little is known about what’s working and what isn’t. This expansion of our research could help these programs more effectively grow the ventures they support,” Sean Peters, director of Emory’s Entrepreneurship Database program, said in a statement. “This could mean more jobs, a larger economic impact and faster market penetration.”
Learn more about the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI).