Research of the Week: UK evidence sheds new light on the impact of business training

We recently wrote a fairly pessimistic take on the potential for the business training industry to materially affect business performance in LMICs. Whilst we aren’t yet ready to reverse our position, we did come across these interesting results from some RCTs in the UK:

https://www.innovationgrowthlab.org/blog/unpicking-the-productivity-puzzle-what-have-we-learnt-from-the-uks-business-basics-programme

Obviously, it’s not exactly apples with apples when looking at a study from the UK and thinking about LMICs. And also there is just a hint of marking your own homework (the implementing partner seems also be the author of the evaluation report) but it was a thorough evaluation with numerous treatment arms. Worthy ideas do abound; lucky really as the UK needs them as much as anyone.