What everybody is interested in but does not want to talk about
Whenever typed into a word document, the spell check picks up on it. People not directly involved in ‘donor interventions’ or ‘monitoring & evaluation” activities are unlikely to be aware of it and even within the group of people that are – nobody really wants to talk about it. At a public event last night around challenge funds, various speakers referred to it as such (the term nobody really wants to talk about), but then it seemed to be central to the discussion anyway: ADDITIONALITY.
In economic terms defined as ‘the net positive difference that results from economic development intervention’, in simpler terms and in relation to BIF it’s the question whether technical assistance provided added value to the business and helped them to implement inclusive business models with positive development results.
There is little doubt that in the context of donor interventions which are spending tax payer’s money, additionality matters. We want to know what changes (if any) were achieved and most importantly ‘whether the positive observable change would not have happened without the intervention’.
Closely linked to these questions around additionality is the question to what extent can we plausibly link the changes to the specific intervention: ATTRIBUTION in short.
The discussions last night made clear that people want to know about both, ideally illustrated by tangible programme results that are easily digestible. However, little seems to exists in the public domain to understand a) how programmes are assessing additionaility and attribution and b) what the findings of those assessments are.
Drawing on BIF experience from 3.5 years of engagement by the Business Innovation Facility with over 300 companies has also not given us a simple solution around additionaility and attribution but in our new report Adding value to innovation? Lessons on donor support to inclusive ... we interrogate the two fundamental assumptions that underpin spending by the UK’s Department for International Development on BIF:
- Technical assistance makes a difference to inclusive business progress
- Inclusive businesses makes a difference to lives at the BoP
The report aims to share findings from the BIF pilot with those facilitating inclusive business and for those who want to know how exactly we came to the conclusion that technical assistance can help inclusive business to develop faster and/or build more robust business models plus how many people likely to be reached at the BoP could plausibly linked to support by BIF, we also tried to explain (in a somewhat digestible way) which assumptions and estimates underpin our findings.
The report is a complemented by a companion publication The 4Ps of Inclusive Business: how perseverance, partnerships, pil... that explores business models that have worked – or not – for inclusive businesses that reach Base of the Pyramid (BoP) consumers, and source from BoP producers.
Both reports as well as other publications marking the end of the BIF pilot are available at businessinnovationfacility.org.