From Paper to Practice: Introducing the IAP Knowledge Exchange Report 2013
This blog was written by Suzanne Dagseven, Innovations Against Poverty.
In the third and final year of the IAP pilot period, we’ve had the chance to evaluate the progress, challenges and achievements of IAP grantees who have been implementing their IAP funded initiatives over the past year or so. It’s been interesting to see how things work out in these early stage inclusive businesses as they take their ideas from paper to practice.
The 2013 IAP Knowledge Exchange report highlights some significant achievements to date: 26 of 29 ‘operational’ IAP companies are on track and continuing to make progress, reach to BoP consumers has grown more than 35 times across only 13 grantees; seven grantees report reaching an additional 800 producers and suppliers (a 32 per cent increase) from the year before, and the number of distributors and entrepreneurs has increased nine times from a low base of 9 to 83 at the end of year one.
It’s early days, and the numbers have to be interpreted with caution. But these are positive signs of progress.
More interesting is to get behind the numbers and understand the journey that has led grantees from where they were at the beginning of IAP funding to where they are today. Their stories reveal the challenges of developing commercially viable business models that can improve the lives of poor people. Some of them are not surprising; the difficulties of finding the right partners, navigating regulatory barriers and bureaucracy, designing affordable yet appealing products and services and distributing them to hard-to-reach communities for example. Other insights are more revealing: the value of rigorous early stage research and user testing, the critical importance of building trust and respect, the effect of aspirational marketing and the potential for systemic impacts are some of the newer insights that can be gleaned from the portfolio.
Grantees report that IAP has had an important role in helping them bridge the gap in financing for early stage inclusive businesses (the so-called ‘Pioneer Gap’). Yet they all state that access to funding is one of their top three challenges, so more support is needed. And indeed donors can support these businesses by providing not just funding but other forms of assistance, such as business advice, promotion, market development and knowledge exchange.
It’s the last point that makes the 2013 Knowledge Exchange Report so valuable. The lessons learnt by these organisations can help inspire, guide and inform other entrepreneurs on their journeys. We hope that this report will be a useful insight for funders, impact investors, incubators, accelerators, advisors and other organisations that aim to help inclusive business thrive, as well as the thousands of entrepreneurs, innovators and business leaders that are also facing the very real challenges and opportunities of an early-stage inclusive business.