Business Analytics Toolkit
Site: | Saylor Academy |
Course: | BUS610: Advanced Business Intelligence and Analytics |
Book: | Business Analytics Toolkit |
Printed by: | Guest user |
Date: | Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 8:45 PM |
Description
This toolkit was developed with the World Bank to teach and provide tools for entrepreneurs to collect data. Business analysis for tech hubs is difficult because the hubs simultaneously influence and are influenced by their local ecosystems. Areas in which tech hubs may benefit from business analytics include finding focus, sharing success with customers, and fundraising.
Imagine you are setting up a tech hub using the framework provided in this toolkit. Make a plan of how you would effectively collect the data. How would you decide what to measure? What resources will you need to effectively implement, monitor, and report the services your tech hub offers?
Table of contents
- 1. Purpose and Highlights
- 2. Is this Toolkit for You?
- 3. What Led infoDev to Develop this Toolkit?
- 4. Why Are Business Analytics Key to a Tech Hub's Success?
- 5. What Does Your Tech Hub Want to Achieve? Your Business Model as the Foundation for Business Analytics
- 6. Who are Your Funders? The Special Case of Funding from Donors and Governments
- 7. What Should You Measure? Developing a Business Analytics Approach and Selecting Indicators
- 8. How Should You Measure? Putting Your Business Analytics Framework into Action
- 9. How do mLabs and mHubs Work with infoDev?
1. Purpose and Highlights
This Business Analytics Toolkit will help you:
1) Understand how to conduct performance measurement for an mLab or mHub, or other tech hubs
2) Improve your planning, lesson learning, and delivery over time
3) Collect data needed to communicate to potential investors and partners.
The toolkit:
- Is oriented towards tech hub managers but is also useful for others interested in the design of tech hubs (part 2)
- Provides a brief description of what led infoDe vto put together this toolkit (part 3)
- Makes the case for the relevance of rigorous business analytics (part 4)
- Categorizes tech hub business models and outlines the consequences of business model selection for business analytics strategies (part 5)
- Highlights important considerations for tech hubs that are funded by governments and donors, including international development organizations such as infoDev (part 6)
- Gives detailed guidance on how a good business analytics approach can be developed and indicators selected in a performance measurement system (part 7)
- Provides instructions on how tech hubs can use business analytics and performance measurement in a continuous process (part 8)
- Briefly outlines how mLabs and mHubs can engage with infoDev once they have a sound business analytics approach in place (part 9).
Source: infoDev, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/24778
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO License.
2. Is this Toolkit for You?
This toolkit was made for managers of tech hubs. Dozens of tech hubs have emerged over the last few years across the globe. Managers of these innovation and entrepreneurship enablers grapple with problems that infoDev has experience with. This toolkit takes lessons that infoDev has gathered from its own tech hub pilots, mLabs and mHubs, and apply them to tech hubs in general.
The toolkit is especially useful for current and future mLab and mHub managers. mLabs and mHubs are tech hubs established through grants administered by the infoDev Digital Entrepreneurship Program. infoDevis committed to supporting the analytical capacities of mLabs and mHubs. This toolkit is part of that agenda. It will help grantees to improve local implementation while setting a common framework on how to collaborate with infoDevon business analytics and performance measurements.
The third target audience is mobile innovation specialists at other World Bank units and other development organizations, who design impact and measurement frameworks for tech hubs. Given the recent rise in numbers of tech hubs, international development organizations are exploring if and how they can be employed to achieve socio-economic development impact goals. In particular, tech hubs' flexibility and diverse potential effects have sparked interest but have also caused problems for specific and concrete analysis and projection of hubs' effects and impact. This toolkit addresses this complication. All elements of the toolkit that speak of infoDev's role in facilitating and coordinating with mLabsor mHubson business analytics processes can be seen as use cases with potential for replication and adaptation by practitioners and decision makers of other development organizations, including relevant units of the World Bank.
3. What Led infoDev to Develop this Toolkit?
Tech hub numbers are burgeoning in developing countries, helping information and communication technology (ICT) developers and entrepreneurs to network, innovate, and start businesses.Set foot into a top-tier hub and you will be struck by the buzz and
excitement that have infused local entrepreneurial communities within just a few years.
InfoDev was at the forefront of the movement when, in 2011, it launched two different kinds of tech hubs to enable entrepreneurship in local mobile application and software markets: mobile application labs (mLabs) and mobile social networking hubs (mHubs). mLabs and mHubs were pilot mobile innovation support programs. The immediate goal was to help info Devlearn from experimentation how the innovation pioneer gap could be bridged through tech hubs. InfoDev has since made great strides learning lessons, making evaluations and publishing knowledge products. Each mLab and mHub operated on different business models tailored to the needs of local markets, which increased the number of real-world experiments that infoDev could learn from.
Box 1: mLabs and mHubs as Local Nodes of the Digital Entrepreneurship Program’s Global Network
mLabs are specialized mobile business incubation and acceleration facilities, offering physical work spaces, mentoring and coaching, devices for app testing, training, and start-up competitions.
mHubs build mobile tech communities by convening a variety of stakeholder groups at informal gatherings, peer-learning sessions, conferences, and ideation and prototyping competitions.
InfoDevis motivated by a grassroots-oriented entrepreneurship support agenda. infoDev decided that the best way to stimulate technology innovation in developing countries is by giving operational independence to in-country grantees that implement mLabs and mHubs, and leave most of the implementation decision making to local partners.
At the same time, infoDev provides technical assistance to mLabs and mHubs, leveraging its expertise, global partnership network, and unique positioning inside the World Bank for the grantees' benefit. So far, infoDevhas helped mLab and mHub managers network at global conferences and published extensive evaluations and knowledge products on mobile innovation. infoDev found this knowledge to be relevant for stakeholders far beyond its network, and therefore makes products like this toolkit available to the public.
But the diversity of models is also a challenge when measuring the success of mLabs and mHubs consistently and continuously. It was difficult standardizing comprehensive measurements of mLabs' and mHubs' performance and effects. mLabs and mHubs them selves struggle to reliably track success indicators over time. This problem is enhanced by the dynamic and complex nature of innovation environments that mLabs and mHubs work in. Altogether, this led infoDev to develop a measurement and analysis approach to codify its improved understanding of how to capture mLabs' and mHubs' evolving effects. It also became clear that performance and effect measurements had to be designed to be directly useful for mLabs and mHubs themselves. infoDev's grantees turn high-level concepts into on the groundreality. This also means that they have the greatest insights into strengths and weaknesses of the tech hubs, and the most direct access to qualitative and quantitative performance data.
This Business Analytics Toolkit is thus an outcome of infoDev's own learning. It codifies what the Digital Entrepreneurship Program has learnt about performance measurement and business analytics, turning these lessons into a practical guide for designers and implementers of tech hubs such as mLabs and mHubs.
4. Why Are Business Analytics Key to a Tech Hub's Success?
Innovation and entrepreneurship support is a complicated endeavor. Entrepreneurs' successes are determined by their motivation, skills, and resources, but also by complex dynamics of the innovation ecosystems in which they work. As a result, business analytics (see box 2 for a definition) for tech hubs face particular challenges and opportunities.
Box 2: What are Business Analytics?
In this toolkit, business analytics refers to the collection, measurement, analysis, and sensemaking of quantitative and qualitative data that pertain to an organization's performance and its effects on clients and stakeholders. The word business
highlights infoDev's belief that innovation support programs such as mLabs and mHubs should best be designed as value-creating, client- oriented, flexible enterprises, whether funding is provided by governments, international development agencies,
or private sector investors.
4.1. Using the "Build, Measure, Learn" Principle to Work in Complex Innovation Ecosystems
A foresighted, sound business analytics approach is crucial for the success and sustainability of your tech hub. The importance of measuring and analyzing results is often underestimated, and is often low on a tech hub manager's long list of priorities, especially during the set- up stage. However, infoDev's and others' experiences has clearly demonstrated that there are great risks in keeping business analytics for later (see box 3). When data is only collected ad hoc, it becomes difficult to understand the connection between provided services and their effects; detailed and continuous tracking is usually more insightful. Consistency and continuity, even beyond a tech hub's own clients and beyond the duration of support programs, makes for the greatest possible learning from successes and failures.
Box 3: A Clear Statement from the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE)
ANDE, in their widely noted 2013 report "Bridging the ‘Pioneer Gap'", found a clear lack of rigorous and sustained performance measurement among impact
accelerators; many of them tech hubs. This is in line with infoDev's experience - in particular,
ANDE's observation that client data is often tracked only for short periods of time after they leave the program. This has prevented many hubs and accelerators from conducting reliable assessments of their own impacts, as improved client success - both
social impact and commercial success - is usually their core goal. ANDE strongly recommends (1) investing in tracking clients' performances, (2) collecting and comparing data for successful and unsuccessful applicants, and (3) collecting data from
clients for a minimum of five years after they leave the support program.
What makes business analytics for tech hubs difficult is that hubs shape local
innovation ecosystems and are influenced by them at the same time. They aim to have a positive effect on various elements of an innovation ecosystem, ranging
from direct improvements of client start-ups' performances to broad changes in entrepreneurial culture. Tech hubs also design their service portfolios so it can fill those gaps in the ecosystem that other organizations don't fully address, so interaction
between hub and ecosystem goes both ways.
Innovation ecosystems in developing countries require support in many shapes and forms, and it can be easy to lose focus. This often means that tech hubs struggle to clearly define their impact goals and rationale. Still, like for any other organization, a clear vision and longer-term, strategic plan is essential for tech hubs. You, the managers and designers, are being called upon to frame clear directions for your hubs, while continuously tweaking business models and adjusting to changes in ecosystems. Resource constraints and the need to coordinate with many diverse stakeholder groups add another layer of complexity. The best tech hubs maintain the highest possible degree of flexibility without losing focus on an overarching mission and strategy.
The "Build, Measure, Learn" approach - a key pillar of the Lean Startup philosophy--is useful in understanding how business analytics can be embedded into iterative business model design. The important insight is that organizational learning never ends, and that business analytics are not an afterthought of implementation. Instead, learning and analytics are part of an iterative process that is at the core of continuous and fast improvement (see figure 1). Another key argument is that start-ups should not spend limited resources on developing elaborate, meticulous measurement and documentation methodologies but instead measure a few simple and clear indicators at regular intervals. Most emerging tech hubs are like to start-ups in that they too need to reconcile measurement rigor and flexibility while maintaining small budgets.
Figure 1: Continuous improvement in the Build, Measure, Learn approach
The "Build, Measure, Learn" approach is particularly suitable for organizations that work to improve innovation ecosystems. Simply put, the more complex and unknown the implementation environment, the more difficult it is to make precise
projections and plans. Recent ideas to improve lesson-learning in international development have acknowledged this and begun to emphasize the need for piloting and experimentation as well as failure detection and frequent and fast course corrections
(or "pivoting" in start-up parlance). For projects that operate in unknown and complex contexts, this is a superior way to think ahead compared to rigid, static, and detailed long-term planning. Innovation ecosystems, with their many diverse stakeholder
groups - from government agencies to freelance software developers - can be understood as complex environments, so tech hubs stand to benefit from flexible, dynamic, and iterative business analytics based on the "Build, Measure, Learn" idea.
4.2. Six Ways for Tech Hubs to Benefit from Business Analytics
Sound business analytics will improve your tech hub in six essential ways (see figure 2):
Figure 2: Six motivations for business analytics
4.2.1. Finding Focus for your Vision and Decision-making
Business analytics help you focus on what matters and make tough decisions to guide your tech hub towards your vision. Tech hubs can pursue a wide range of value propositions and business models. The list of services to choose from ranges
all the way from hosting informal gatherings with a handful of coders to managing an investment portfolio for gazelle start-ups. Opportunities and options are endless, and different stakeholders will approach you for interesting projects that are
not always an ideal fit. Tech hub budgets are limited, and you will have to make tough decisions on how best to use your resources and in which direction to take your tech hub. Only if you have clear targets for the core results that you want to achieve
will you be able to push essential services to maximum effectiveness and say "no" to ad hoc activities that are irrelevant to your unique value proposition.
4.2.2. Learning and Improving
Continuous learning about what works and what does not is a necessary condition for improving. You as the manager or designer of a tech hub are in the best position to understand the hub. However, even the best manager's capacity is limited, and as the hub becomes larger and more complex, the less likely that ad hoc lesson learning will be enough. You will also improve your joint decision-making with your consortium members or advisory board if you can present them with well-documented information. If you want to continuously improve the value that you generate for your clients, you will need to measure and analyze your performance as best as you can, much beyond your daily experience. This is particularly true with tech hubs like mLabs and mHubs, which can have unanticipated, but important indirect effects. (see box 4).
4.2.3. Fundraising
You will need compelling analytics to fundraise and "sell" your tech hub to your funders, clients, and
Box 4: Tech hubs with Far-Flung Effects: The Holistic mLab Outcome Assessment
infoDev implemented the original four mLabs with quite broad implementation frameworks and setting only modest specific targets (see http://www.infodev.org/mobilebusinessmodels for more background). Ultimately, mLabs turned out to have many indirect and systemic effects on various parts of local, regional, and international markets and innovation ecosystems. While infoDev had a substantial amount of anecdotal evidence on these effects, towards the end of the grant period, it was not clear what the holistic outcomes of mLabs had been.
As a response, infoDev conducted an outcome assessment (see http://www.infodev.org/mobile/mlaboutcomes). The task at hand was not easy and even for a full research team of an external evaluation agency it was impossible to measure all of the mLabs' far-
flung effects. Still, the evaluation generated several useful insights. For instance, the assessment
showed that mLabs' effects on start-ups' business performance (revenues, investments raised, etc.) was actually just one - and probably not the most
important - part of mLabs' effects. Instead, mLabs' catalytic effect as a broker of linkages in ecosystems and to some extent also their role in stimulating mobile app innovations with positive social impact was just as relevant an outcome as their
immediate effects on the supported start-ups.
partners. Just like any other organization, you need to market your tech hub to potential clients, funders, and other stakeholders. Your documented successes are the best argument to convince new client entrepreneurs and developers
to join. In tech hub business models, access to clients is often what is relevant for partners and sponsors, so there should be synergies in your stakeholder management strategy. It is a good strategy to combine storytelling and qualitative evidence
with hard results numbers. If you have a compelling and clear value proposition, and if you track important results numbers consistently, it would be easy to summarize and frequently update your pitch in short brochures, graphics, or videos. Infographics,
as a tool to make complicated and dense information accessible to a wider audience, have become particularly popular in recent years. You can also include a simple real-time tracker that automatically imports selected statistics onto your website
(see the website of Kenya's leading tech hub, the iHub, at http://www.ihub.co.ke/). Beyond informing readers, this helps to convey immediacy and transparency of your website as a whole.
4.2.4. Showcasing Clients
Analytics help to showcase your clients, giving them visibility and improving their chances of success. Your own success as a tech-hub manager is tied to the success of your clients, whether you are leading a community or incubating start-ups. Moreover, you play the role of a broker and marketer for your client companies. Start-ups and early-stage entrepreneurs often do not have the resources for outreach and partnership building, but tracking and marketing their stories will benefit both clients and yourself.
Business analytics provide you with good arguments on the substance of your clients' successes, making your joint outreach and communication easier.
4.2.5. Sharing Success with Clients
Your clients' success determines your future revenue, and business analytics help you show them your added value. Most tech hubs - especially those directly supporting start-ups - generate part of their revenues directly from client entrepreneurs. Community
members and co-creation space users might pay a fee to attend special events or use desk space, and business analytics will help you show them what you have to offer. Analytics are even more important to manage royalty and equity agreements with incubation
and acceleration clients. The issue here is that your revenue only starts to flow a long time after you provide your services. For instance, an exit from an equity position might only make sense years after the start-up has left the program and, also,
royalty schemes may kick in only after the start-up achieves a certain threshold turnover or profit. In these cases, long-term, reliable analytics will help you make your case that you have actually added value to their businesses. Secondly, analytics
record and document when your clients received support, what kind of support, and the consequent results. This makes interaction and relationship with your clients more transparent and creates accountability on both sides, which will make it much
easier to claim your fair share of your clients' success even months and years after you supported them.
4.2.6. Being Accountable
If you receive funding from governments and donors, and if your tech hub is governed by a consortium, business analytics makes it easier to fulfill additional accountability and reporting requirements. Public and private donors in international development as well as governments have a responsibility to use their funds judiciously, and to ensure high levels of accountability and transparency. At the same time, these organizations often manage large budgets, and the funding they provide to tech hubs might only be a small part of their overall portfolio. As a result, they often require data to assess their own impact and accountability that might go beyond the data that is immediately relevant for you. But with solid business analytics in place, it is much easier for you to service your government and donor funder information requests. Similarly, your consortium partners might be crucial supporters of your tech hub, but they too have an obligation to ensure that they selected the right tech hub manager to run day-to-day operations, which they are usually not intimately familiar with. Business analytics can help you illustrate and create documentation of your work and its impact. Creating more extensive accountability and tracking structures might also have positive side effects in professionalizing and formalizing your operations (see box 5).
Box 5: The Unexpected Benefits of Akirachix' Reporting Struggle
Akirachix is a grassroots community-builder for women entrepreneurs in Nairobi. After receiving an mHub grant from infoDev, the small organization grappled with the burden of reporting back on results, struggling to free resources and staff to complete
the task. The challenges and feedback ultimately held good lessons for infoDev and contributed to the motivation to develop this toolkit. But more importantly, the process also helped Akirachix formalize its results tracking and reporting structures,
which contributed to its ability to secure a further grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). See http://www.infodev.org/mobilebusinessmodels for the full case study.
5. What Does Your Tech Hub Want to Achieve? Your Business Model as the Foundation for Business Analytics
Many different tech hub models are possible but a clear focus on your goals is necessary to set up a useful business analytics approach. Tech hubs can fulfill various functions with various implementation models. They can be profit-oriented or not, and their services can range all the way from hosting an informal meeting with a handful of students to intensive multi-year, hands-on incubation programs. While diverse services can complement each other and experimentation is vital, it is not possible to measure potential effects that tech hub services might have. Instead, it is important to know why you are running your tech hub in a certain way, and what your goals are. Having a very clear answer to this question will help identify a small set of metrics that are relevant indicators of the effects that your tech hub has.Box 6: infoDev resources for tech hub business model design
The infoDev Digital Entrepreneurship Program has published several resources to help tech hub managers and designers identify viable business models in the innovation ecosystems of developing countries:1. The Business Model Toolkit provides tools to develop and test a business model for an mLab or mHub, which can be adapted for other tech hubs.
2. The Business Model Evaluation report includes in-depth case studies of business models of four mLabs and three mHubs across five countries, as well as rich contextual and conceptual information.
3. The Holistic Outcomes Assessment of mLabs report takes a closer look at the effects that three of infoDev's four mLabs have had, including their indirect and systemic effects on innovation ecosystems.
In infoDev's experience, tech hubs like mLabs and mHubs have three approaches to achieve their goals:
Box 7: Three business model approaches to support mobile application enterprises
Innovation ecosystems in developing countries often have gaps beyond the lack of support for start- ups. For instance, innovator and entrepreneur communities could be fragmented, or the local talent base might be too small to develop compelling technological solutions. As a result, infoDev found that ecosystem building and skill development can be useful for longer-term and systemic improvement of the conditions for mobile app start-up entrepreneurs. The three different approaches can be connected back to groups of services that mLabs and mHubs can offer.
Start-up Creation: mentoring, seed funding, focused networking (including with investors), acceleration-type start-up competitions, deal brokerage, marketing support, office space, business support.
Skill Development: technical and business training, workshops, app testing facilities, prototyping events and hackathons, coaching, virtual learning.
Network Building: informal networking events, multi-stakeholder conferences, virtual community building, team-building and ideation competitions (hackathons, start-up weekends, barcamps).
Ultimate goal: Support growth-oriented mobile entrepreneurship. |
||
How? Three different but complementary approaches |
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1. Start-up Creators Start and develop new growth- oriented start-ups. |
2. Skill Developers Broaden entrepreneurial and technical talent pool and train competent potential start-up founders and employees. |
3. Network Builders Bring together diverse stakeholder groups and help activate and organize communities. |
Which services? Business models typically focus on different services |
||
Informal networking events and gatherings Multi-stakeholder conferences, often including small-scale innovation competitions (example, start-up weekends, barcamps) Blogging, newsletters, and mailing lists. |
Technical and business trainings, workshops, and clinics Virtual learning courses and platforms Mobile app testing facilities. |
Regular, in-depth, one-on-one start-up mentorship and coaching Core business support (accounting, financial management, legal services, etc.) Business development: brokerage and mediation of formal contracts, grants, and partnerships. |
Questions to ask yourself: Which approach is the best fit for you and your innovation ecosystem? All of them, one, none? If you have limitations in one of the areas, are there other partners that you can engage to help? If you are well suited to deliver all three, what resources will you need to effectively implement, monitor, and report? |
start-up creation, skill development, and network building. Every business model is different, but there are categories of tech hub business models that can help narrow down your business analytics. For instance, it will help determine metrics if you are clear about what you are interested in: sowing the seeds of entrepreneurship at the foundations of the ecosystem, or work with start-ups and help them become regional and global leaders. infoDev has identified three different approaches that support growth- oriented mobile entrepreneurship but tackle gaps in ecosystems in distinct ways: Start-up Generators have start-up creation and development as their direct goal; Skill Developers focus on broadening the entrepreneurial and technical talent pool and train competent potential start-up founders and employees; and Network Builders bring together diverse stakeholder groups and help activate and organize communities (see box 7 for examples of services that these three approaches typically entail).
These three approaches are not mutually exclusive, but if you know which approach you want to take, you will have a better idea which business analytics to use. Clearly, Skill Development, Network Building, and direct Start-up Creation are all important for mobile app enterprises to emerge and thrive. It is definitely advantageous to pursue all three at the same time, and there could be important complementarities and synergies. Some services, like innovation competitions, may play a role in all three approaches. However, to develop a viable and compelling business analytics approach, it is important to know in which direction you want to go and which identity you want to have.
For example, there could be synergies, but there also could be tradeoffs and tensions between different services, as all tech hubs have limited resources. Business analytics are important in this context because, if your targets for example revolve around Start-up Creation, you could abandon informal networking events when push comes to shove. But if your goal is community building within a Network Building mindset, and if your tracking and targets relfect this mission, you could neglect services for Start-up Creation such as hands-on mentoring and seed financing. In other words, business analytics are determined by your goals and clear vision, but over time they also affect the services you implement and the tradeoff decisions you make. Setting the right course and being aware of differences between approaches is therefore important before you start to design specific indicators or performance- measurement systems.
6. Who are Your Funders? The Special Case of Funding from Donors and Governments
If you receive funding from donors or government organizations, you need to think beyond the value proposition for your immediate clients. If you are a profit-oriented tech hub that generates all of its funding directly from clients, identifying your value proposition within your overarching goal and business model framework provides you with a sound basis to understand which metrics matter for business analytics. But if your funders provide you with resources so that you create value for someone else, you will also need to understand the funders' own success metrics.
Tech hubs often have several different public and private funders and sponsors. It is important to find common ground between the goals of all funders and of the hub itself. Funding rarely comes without strings attached, and not all funding will allow you to directly work towards your own long-term goal. If you have diverse partners from government agencies, to multinationals, to grassroots organizations, you need to be sensitive to their respective goals and their success metrics to be able to identify the best possible business analytics approach for your hub.
The basic alignment between your funders' goals and your own should come from the value proposition for your clients - this is what ultimately determines your funders' impact. Governments and donors are not your clients, as you do not provide value directly for them. Their reason for funding you is that they believe that you are better positioned than they are to provide value to someone else, "beneficiaries" in international development language - in this case, early-stage tech entrepreneurs and start-ups. In other words, by providing value to your clients, you help your funders have a positive impact on others' lives, instead of generating profit or utility for themselves.
Governments and donors have their own vision and logic on how activities lead to impact, which they often codify in an impact model or a "theory of change." For instance, a donor might conceptualize that business mentoring for young software developers leads them to start and run sustainable and growth-oriented businesses, which means that more people are employed and more taxes paid than without the mentoring. So, mentoring ultimately contributes to socio-economic development and improved quality of life. In infoDev's case, the envisioned impact is related to private sector development, so the focus is on metrics such as job creation and revenue generation through start-ups (see box 8).
Box 8: A success on many levels: the case of Kopo Kopo
One of mLab East Africa's most successful incubation graduates is the mobile financial services company Kopo Kopo. In just a few years of operation, the enterprise created about 50 jobs and served more than 10,000 small business customers. In 2013, Kopo Kopo secured series A funding of $2.6 million. Kopo Kopo attributes substantial value to the support that it received from the mLab in its early days (see http://www.infodev.org/mobile- entrepreneur-case-studies).
For mLab East Africa, Kopo Kopo greatly contributed to its targets to increase revenues and investments of incubatees. For infoDev and the Digital Entrepreneurship Program, both the job creation effect and Kopo Kopo's function as a role model and active member of the Nairobi innovation ecosystem were important private sector development results. Finally, for infoDev's donors, such as the government of Finland, Kopo Kopo represents an example how growth-oriented mobile application enterprises broadly contribute to socio-economic development in low-income countries, in this case by increasing financial inclusion of small businesses and transformative impact on payments.
If you want your business analytics to fit in with your funders' impact models, you should work with them to identify existing and potential overlaps, and do so proactively and continuously. Many problems that grant recipients have with reporting through scorecards and logframes stem from the underlying problem that funders can have somewhat different perspectives and priorities. They might use a different language, not fully aware of your constraints and local realities. Donor and government funders also tend to request as much information as they can to assess any potential impact that their funding has generated, which can put pressure on you, given your resource constraints and narrower focus. Your funders are also held to higher-level impact and results agreements that they made with their own funders or governing bodies. In this complicated and indirect communication and codification chain, overlaps might not be obvious and tracking and evaluation might become more cumbersome than it should be. It will help if you engage in a dialogue with your funder to continuously understand their requirements and communicate your own.
Ideally, impact models and your value proposition are interlocked in a coherent logic. Usually, donors and governments fund an array of projects like yours, and your project is only part of their program portfolio. This means that your performance
feeds into your funders' activities that are conceptualized to lead to some type of wider-scale impact. Ideally, the impact models of higher-level programs are aligned, and the value you create contributes to the start of your funders' results
chains (see figure 3). While it is not your responsibility to be intimately familiar with all higher-level impact models, general awareness of how your results are interlocked with this can help you to better communicate with your funder and work
towards better alignment, or think about solutions when alignment cannot be reached.
Figure 3: Alignment of a tech hub business model with funders' impact models with infoDev as an example. Source: Catherine Amelink.
Your government or donor funder can often be a valuable source of information to decide your business analytics approach. The fact that your government and donor funders usually manage several projects like yours can help you conduct benchmarking
and comparisons with other tech hubs. For instance, infoDev brought together mLab and mHub managers from across the globe about once per year and, at the end of the grant period, codified lessons in several reports (see box 6). Another
example is the effort of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) to work with Afrilabs. Together, they organized two annual reunions in Berlin that helped African hub managers to coordinate and strategize a joint agenda.8 Knowledge-oriented international organizations are also increasingly publishing rich reports on innovation ecosystems in developing countries. While direct comparisons of concrete results figures (for example, number of start-ups created) can
lead to unfair comparisons that neglect the ecosystem context, most of these resources use both qualitative and quantitative evidence that you can use as "enriched benchmarks" and learning material.
7. What Should You Measure? Developing a Business Analytics Approach and Selecting Indicators
What you should measure should be solely driven by your goals and your specific context. As explained in the previous sections, your own goals, your business model (adjusted to the local context), and your funders all help decide the right approach to business analytics. Tech hubs are not all the same, and so there is no common recipe. That is true even among infoDev's tech hubs, mLabs and mHubs. Each mLab and mHub has different local co-founders and different local ecosystem conditions that they address. At the same time, mLabs and mHubs are initially infoDev grantees, which means that they must be aligned and contribute to infoDev's Digital Entrepreneurship Program impact model. While they may have additional more confined goals with regard to supporting mobile innovation ecosystems and mobile app entrepreneurs, the impact model is a tested one and its indicators are based on previous experience in a variety of countries and unique ecosystems. Grantees also receive guidance and inputs from infoDev throughout the process. In the following section, the toolkit will draw from infoDev's past experience with mLabs and mHubs and use their examples to illustrate potential approaches for tech hubs in general.
While the general logic remains the same, you will need to adapt the guidelines provided here if you are dealing with different funders and different overarching impact models.
7.1. General Guidelines for Tech Hub Performance Indicator Selection
You should always remind yourself of the general principles of business analytics, as this will help you to avoid common mistakes. In infoDev's experience, tech hubs and incubators often struggle to follow general principles of performance measurement and evaluation (see figure), either because they lack awareness or because they do not prioritize this agenda early on, only to feel the consequences later.
7.1.1. Less Can Be More
There is often a temptation to measure everything that can be measured. More data is often confused with more information and, therefore, more knowledge. The greater the number of data points one has, the greater the capacity needed to make sense of it; and the greater the complexity in understanding what is really important to your specific mission. Further, as implementation is what we do every day, the majority of indicators tend to be developed for the output level, with a lack of attention to the measures that really matter in the long term, outcome indicators. Outcome indicators measure your added value. If you cannot demonstrate this value, the position of your tech hub becomes much more tenuous. For instance, the number of people in a contact data base or the number of people attending a prototyping competition can be meaningful if your goal is to reach a lot of stakeholders, but if your goal is to create start-ups, the link between these data points and your success is less clear (see box 9).
Box 9: Can Hackathons Create Start-ups?
Ideation and prototyping competitions have become popular in recent years. The notion that hackathons create a large number of functional mobile app innovations in a very short time is compelling. For business analytics, there is a temptation to count the number of innovators attending hackathons and the number of prototypes to infer that many innovations have been created. But infoDev's and others' experience has clearly shown that hackathons by themselves rarely create sustainable app innovations or viable start-ups. Instead, based on early lessons, mLabs, mHubs, and infoDev have quickly shifted towards innovation competitions that emphasize the depth of coaching and mentoring, including strong event preparation and follow-on support. While this means that fewer teams and individuals can be supported, the impact on start-up creation and success can be much higher. Such effects, however, have to be tracked over time by following the paths of innovation competition winners and those that did not win a prize. The amount of revenue they make and how much it increases might be a better measure for the success of a competition. See http://www.infodev.org/m2work and http://www.infodev.org/mobilebusinessmodels for more information.
Another problem with measuring too much is that your stakeholders will get tired of being evaluated, especially if you rely on surveys and interviews. You should ultimately arrive at a clean, clear, short list of qualitative and quantitative indicators that you want to measure, which should only contain those indicators that are definitely relevant for the impact you want to have and the value you want to provide.
7.1.2. Focus on Your Contribution
However, it is extremely difficult to find control groups for the kinds of services that mHubs and mLabs offer. Stakeholders of innovation ecosystems are difficult to compare as they depend on each other in complex ways. It becomes tough to isolate
a tech hub's contribution effect without substantial effort. While you should keep in mind your contribution to your clients' success, all of your clients' success is not a result of your support. Simply put, you should ask yourself: Where would
my client be without the value that I have provided for them?
Where would my clients be without receiving the value that I provided for them?
What are my clients doing differently as a result of the services (the value) I have provided to them?
7.1.3. Longitudinal and Before/After Data Is Key
The best alternative to a proper contribution analysis is to track data for the supported group over extended periods of time and make inferences about changes to it that were very likely due to the service you provided. For instance, you will know that your support was useful if a small start-up joins your program, having had flat revenues for a year or so, and three months after joining, its revenue increases by 30 percent. This also works for specific services within your portfolio: you can compare revenue evolution during the year before a new mentor was recruited and over the following year.
The same is true with perceptual and qualitative indicators such as satisfaction with your service that clients express in surveys and interviews. It is essential that you consistently and rigorously track key indicators and collect additional contextual information, which should be easier once you identify a short list of indicators as described in the first principle.
7.1.4. Use Quantitative Information but Target It Wisely
Numbers are a powerful communicator, and almost every business analytics approach will include some sort of quantitative element. However, making quantitative data reliable and meaningful is often not as easy as it seems. For instance, the number of people joining your events might give you a good idea of your reach in the local ecosystem, but it does not tell you much about the quality of connections that participants made during the event and how this changed their success or the success of your immediate clients. Quantitative data collection was also cumbersome for mLabs and mHubs because their activities and services change frequently depending on ecosystem needs, and a lot of effects happen through informal exchanges and through indirect paths.
So, you should ask yourself how the value you provide can be quantified meaningfully before you look at any data points just because they are easily available. What is the best proxy measure for the kind of value that you want to achieve? This exercise goes hand in hand with the first and second principle: you should find a handful of quantitative indicators that directly speak to your value proposition. Focus on those, tracking them consistently.
7.1.5. Don't Underestimate the Qualitative
Quantitative data will always be part of your business analytics, but they will rarely be enough for you to understand and improve your performance and value proposition. This is true because many of the effects of services that mLabs and mHubs provide unfold only over time and in indirect ways. You are trying to affect different elements of a complex innovation ecosystem, so some things will remain uncertain and impossible for you to fully capture and quantify.
This is where qualitative data can be powerful. First, it can help you to get a rough idea of the magnitude of your contribution: if your clients express that they could not have achieved what they did without your support, this will give you a clear indication that your program provides value - which is also why testimonials are generally such a powerful communicator.
Second, people's perceptions drive their actions. You can also use qualitative evidence to understand the effects of your support on your clients' and other ecosystem stakeholders' changing beliefs and motivations. For instance, local innovation ecosystems are in large part driven by buzz and excitement, and community building in particular relies on individuals' vision and drive. So if you can reliably track, for instance, that your clients' confidence to start a business or lead a community has changed as a result of your support, this is evidence of a valuable contribution that you would not be able to capture with quantitative data alone.
Third, other lessons and learnings, which are strongly context and situation-related, could be difficult to capture with quantitative indicators. For example, a certain mentor with a strong personality could work well for some of your clients and not so well for others, or a political incident could affect the ecosystem. Such information, very important to understand your clients' success, is unlikely to be uncovered through quantitative data.
7.1.6. Find the Right Mix Between Consistent and Flexible Measurement
Simple quantitative indicators provide most insight when measured consistently over extended periods of time. On the other hand, as an mLab or mHub that is starting out, you will almost definitely adjust your business model, or you might even pivot to an entirely different model, which will of course affect your choice of performance metrics. Overall, the mix between consistency and flexibility also means that the indicator selection process will be reiterated over time - very much in the spirit of the "Build, Measure, Learn" principle - and infoDev and you will need to flexibly adjust whenever this helps you better understand your value contribution and impact.
Altogether, this means that you will need to be consistent and flexible at the same time. In other words, you should differentiate between those key (quantitative) indicators that are most insightful when tracked continuously and consistently, and those where you can flexibly adapt without losing too many insights as you adjust your business model. This point emphasizes even more that the handful of key quantitative performance indicators that you want to track should be chosen carefully, as you will benefit from sticking with them over a long time period. Qualitative indicators, on the other hand, lend themselves more to adjustments; you can more easily incorporate additional contextual and exploratory information queries, for instance, taking interview questions in a different direction once you uncover something new or surprising.
7.1.7.Integrate Performance Tracking in Agreements with Your Clients and Partners
A big challenge with performance measurement is that there is wide agreement that it is relevant and useful, but often the people that hold the critical information (in particular, clients and partners) are reluctant to spend time and effort to share it. There is often a fundamental misalignment of incentives: your clients and partners might think that the information is relevant only to you and not to them, and they gain nothing by spending time sharing it with you.
This means that you need to go the extra mile to convince your clients and partners that your performance tracking will benefit them as well. It also implies that you have an obligation to keep information seeking from clients and partners to the necessary minimum. This is in line with the principle that you must only focus on a few key indicators and consistently track them. Lastly, you should also share the insights that you derive with your clients and partners, at least as far as they are relevant to their work. There is a chronic dearth of information in many if not most innovation ecosystems in developing countries, so your clients and partners are likely to appreciate your evaluation efforts if you show them the knowledge benefit that they get from you when they share the information you need.
It will also help if you discuss your performance measurement requirements with clients and partners early on. You should include specific clauses and requirements in formal support agreements that you set up with your start-up and entrepreneur clients. This will help them anticipate the time and effort that they are expected to invest in providing you with feedback and information on their progress. In particular if your business model relies on revenue sharing or royalties from start-ups and entrepreneurs, you will need to formally agree with your clients on reporting requirements even beyond the duration of their participation in your program.
7.2. Selecting Indicators and Performance Metrics for Tech Hubs
7.2.1. Funder-Designed vs. Your Own Business Model
There are two scenarios for setting indicators and performance metrics for a tech hub: either your funder proposes a comprehensive business model including indicator templates and measurement plans, or you as the aspiring tech hub-lead develop the
business model and indicators yourself.
At the outset, you need to assess the basic requirements that your funder sets. For instance, infoDev has experimented with different approaches to business model design and indicator selection for its tech hubs, depending on the project
context (see box 10). Your funder may give you a specific implementation and business model, including indicators, or if they may expect you to develop the business model and indicators from scratch.
If you can measure it, you can manage it. The indicators you select are your guideposts; providing you with key progress information and the ability to correct course if performance is not what it should be.
Box 10: infoDev's Role in Business Model Design and Indicator Pre-Selection
When setting up the 12 original mLabs and mHubs, infoDev asked for proposals of business and implementation models from local grant applicants who were given only a relatively broad framework of expected deliverables, services, and functions. infoDev chose a different approach for the Caribbean Mobile Innovation Project (CMIP). Here, it involved the region's mobile innovation stakeholders in a design process and then developed a detailed business plan. The plan would guide implementation of services and also specify the business model for the grantee over the four years of the project. This approach was chosen as infoDev was well positioned to provide a birds-eye view of the Caribbean project, where nascent innovation communities on different islands, with different backgrounds and economic contexts, had to be organized in a coherent large- scale project. For future mLabs and mHubs, infoDev will determine the depth for upfront business planning and indicator selection on a case by case basis.
If you design your own tech hub business model, identifying performance metrics should be part of your business model design before you pitch the model to your funder. infoDev has published the Business Model Toolkit for mLabs, which takes you through all the steps necessary to design a comprehensive strategy and value-creation approach for a tech hub that can be tried out in the market. The following presupposes that you have run through this exercise and already have a good idea of the market conditions and your goals, strengths, and weaknesses.
If you advance in your application for a tech hub grant, you will usually co-develop your performance metrics with your funder. As you progress through the stages of a tech hub funding application process, you will collaborate more and more with your funder to further develop your business model, including your business analytics approach. For instance, for an infoDev mLab or mHub grant, you might suggest a crude list of indicators during the expression of interest phase, and then advance with detailed indicator lists, definitions, and targets based on the feedback received from infoDev when you submit your application to the call for proposals. During this process, you should see your funder as your partner, and both parties will benefit if you are transparent about any concerns or constraints that you anticipate.
The co-development process should be interactive, but your funder will usually have some basic requirements. As described in section 6, your value proposition will need to fit in with your funder's impact model. In the example case of the Digital Entrepreneurship Program, the overarching goal is to find, nurture, and help accelerate high-growth potential mobile applications enterprises. Many services and activities that tackle early-stage innovation gaps are possible under this umbrella - from community- building and ideation events to intense accelerator programs that emphasize one-on-one business mentoring and equity investments. At the same time, the program's focus on growth-oriented entrepreneurship clearly frames the metrics and evaluation approaches that are relevant to assess its effects, and suitable mLab or mHub business models will usually pursue one or a combination of the three business model approaches of Network Building, Skill Development, and Start-up Creation (see box 7).
7.2.2.Implementation Quality/Output Indicators
You will need to track a set of core implementation indicators, measuring to ensure that your tech hub is on par for service efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. There are several basic measures that indicate whether your tech hub is functioning at a good standard. This list of measures should be easy to track as it relates mostly to basic records of your activities and tracked client participation. In an impact model, these measures would be called output indicators, which reflect your funder's direct accountability towards their own donors. Mostly, these indicators do not by themselves imply that you are providing value for your clients: instead they track that you are implementing of the services, rather than their effects on the clients. As an example, table 1 summarizes the output indicators that infoDev usually expects mLabs and mHubs to track. Even though these indicators seem basic, infoDev requires mLabs and mHubs to keep consistent records and report back at regular intervals. This will be true for other funders too. The appendix includes detailed definitions of some the indicators.
Getting the mLab or mHub up and running |
Building capacity to deliver |
Delivering services |
Business/implementation model/plan developed/co- developed and revised with infoDev (infoDev template or own) |
Number of partnerships with financial and non-financial service providers. |
Number of businesses/entrepreneurs receiving services: different levels/kinds of support, increases in the volume of services over time. |
Number and type of consortia/partnerships formalized to deliver the business/implementation model/plan |
Amount and type of financial and non-financial contributions (human, in kind) secured/committed from partners for additional support of businesses/entrepreneurs (equivalent to resource leverage by mLab or mHub, unless implemented services uniquely benefit non-entrepreneurial stakeholders) |
Volume of seed funding from mLab or mHub received by businesses/entrepreneurs (if applicable) |
Development of sound and robust governance structures for the mLab or mHub (for example, advisory board set up) |
Institutional capacity established (for example, functional reporting and governance processes) |
Number of businesses/entrepreneurs reporting satisfied or very satisfied with mLab/mHub services |
Locally relevant results framework and performance monitoring frameworks developed and in use by mLab or mHub to collect and share data and lessons. |
mLab or mHub manager/staff's use of gained implementation knowledge. |
Number of knowledge sharing events and knowledge products developed. |
Institutional capacity established |
mLab or mHub manager/staff's changes in implementation capacity (self-rated) |
Number of media appearances |
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Enabler cost to sustainable revenue ratio |
7.2.3.Value Proposition/Outcome Indicators
In addition to implementation quality indicators, you will need to track a set of core value proposition/outcome indicators. Beyond your basic implementation quality, you will need to assess to what extent you succeed in offering the value proposition that you envisioned for your clients. In mLabs and mHubs, managers must track a short list of indicators that assess the effectiveness of their implementation, that is, the value created and the outcomes they contribute to.
infoDev has identified three separate approaches to mobile app enterprise support for tech hubs: Start-up Creation, Skill Development, and Network Building. Tech hubs can pick from an extensive list of services when they design their business model. But the Digital Entrepreneurship Program's experience with the mLab and mHub pilots has shown that some services have the potential to support mobile app enterprises directly while others rather serve to set the foundations for enterprise development in ecosystems with large gaps that prevent start-ups from emerging. Skill Development and Network Building were identified as crucial approaches, aside from direct Start-up Creation (see section 5. and box 7).
The core value proposition/outcome indicators that you will need to track depend on the approach that you pursue. infoDev's past experience has shown that for each approach - Start-up Creation, Skill Development, or Network Building - different sets of core indicators are needed to measure outcomes.
For instance, trainings implemented within a Skill Developer model might have substantial effects on mobile app entrepreneurship, but it might be impossible to link the indirect and long-term effects of trainings to typical Start-up Creation outcome indicators, such as increases in start-up revenues. The core lists of possible indicators are deliberately kept short, and you should be able to choose additional indicators that allow flexibility in your business analytics approach. The appendix includes detailed definitions of the Start-up Creator indicators.
Possible indicators for a Start-up Creator |
Possible indicators for a Skill Developer |
Possible indicators for a Network Builder |
Additional sales revenue for businesses |
Increase in skill level of businesses/entrepreneurs (self- reported, for example, measured in tests and through surveys) |
Usefulness and outcomes of networking and community- building events as reported by participants (for example, measured through twice annual surveys) |
Profitability of businesses, including changes over time |
Increase in investment readiness of businesses/entrepreneurs (baseline measure at entrance and measure at exit, based on tool/scorecard, measures change against criteria at exit) |
Number of registered/signed-up community members as a result of the activity of the mLab or mHub |
Number of businesses who raised grants, early or growth stage finance, including amount of financing |
Jobs/salaries/contracts obtained as result of the services as reported by businesses/entrepreneurs (for example, measured through surveys 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months after the support) |
Increase in the linkages between organizations in the ecosystem as a result of the activity of the mLab or mHub |
Number of digital products/services developed/improved |
Number of digital product/service prototypes developed/improved |
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Number of users reached by developed/improved digital products/services |
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Number of new new direct jobs created by businesses |
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There could be additional indicators that your funders require you to track for specific service agreements or projects. The social impact potential of mobile applications is widely recognized, and international development organizations and institutional development funders are exploring approaches to stimulate inclusive and social mobile app innovations. This means that they might integrate additional indicators in their impact models to incentivize you to develop your services in a ways that they have greater potential to generate a specific type of social impact. For instance, infoDev together with the four mLabs and mHub Nepal ran the global mobile microwork challenge "m2Work," and many mLabs and mHubs have individually attracted social impact funding or run inclusive innovation competitions (see box 11).
Similarly, strengthening opportunities for women to close the gender gap in tech entrepreneurship is
Box 11: mLabs Tapping into Entrepreneurial Communities to Generate Social Impact
A good example of a social impact innovation competition is mLab East Asia's and UNICEF's Mobile Hackathon in June 2013. The mLab tapped into its large network of entrepreneurs and coders across Vietnam to promote developing innovations for children.
Close to 100 hackers gathered at the main event in Ho Chi Minh City; two teams won the challenges that UNICEF had set out and received cash prizes (see http://www.unicef.org/vietnam/media_21108.html). The mLab also provided follow-on support
for the best teams.
In January 2014, mLab East Africa embedded a social enterprise track into its incubation program. The mLab set up the Mobile Impact Ventures Program (see http://mlab.co.ke/mivp/) in partnership with the Global Impact
Investment Network and with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and Tony Elumelu Foundation. Focusing on the agriculture, education, and health and water sectors, selected start-ups undergo a three-month intense mentoring program
and group trainings. The venture with the most traction will then receive seed funding of $5,000 and support to attract additional growth capital.
8. How Should You Measure? Putting Your Business Analytics Framework into Action
8.1. Establishing a Performance Measurement System
Box 12: The CMIP Performance Measurement System
The Caribbean Mobile Innovation Project (CMIP) was designed to foster entrepreneurship and the start-ups ecosystem with a region-wide approach, nurturing early stage mobile app innovators across the Caribbean islands. Given the complexity of the project, infoDev decided to conduct substantial feasibility scoping and business planning upfront. In 2014, infoDev gave a grant to the UWI consortium that covered a large part of the cost of the project for four years. infoDev, together with the Canadian government, also developed a framework of key performance indicators (KPIs) that would guide the CMIP's priorities. The KPIs firmly set the consortium's focus on project sustainability, setting expectations of increasing effectiveness and co-financing8.2. Use Lean Start-up-style Hypothesis Validation to Extract Better Learnings
8.3. Budgeting, Planning, and Staffing for Continuous Analytics
You will have to plan for resources and time for business analytics and maintaining your performance measurement system; usually a monthly in-depth analytics session is helpful. As you have seen from this toolkit, business analytics is an ongoing process and not a one-off, ad hoc initiative. This implies that you need to plan for resources and not underestimate the effort that this will take. You will develop a routine and rhythm when to delve deeper into the analytics. A monthly in-depth session that can, for example, precede strategy meetings with your advisory board or consortium is a good rule of thumb. In the hectic day-to-day schedule of an mLab or mHub manager, it will be tempting to skip these regular sessions.8.4. Involve Outside Help
Research and consultancy organizations can help you with in-depth evaluations, in particular, in the context of inflection points for your business model and strategy. Once you developed a performance measurement system that works for you, you should be able to stay on top of your regular tracking and learning exercises.Box 13: mLab East Africa Learning and Improving from Evaluation
mLab East Africa was the first mLab to get off the ground and also the first to conduct a comprehensive evaluation conducted by the University of Nairobi. While some findings were expected, others were surprising and shaped the mLab's future decisions. For instance, incubatees clearly demanded more personalized mentorship and Pivot East participants called for better follow-on support for finalists, which later became key factors for the design ofthe mLab’s virtual incubation program.
9. How do mLabs and mHubs Work with infoDev?
If you have a performance measurement system in place, you stand to benefit from informally keeping infoDev in the loop and accessing its expertise and feedback. While infoDev cannot and should not micromanage your mLab or mHub, it will be better able to support you if it is aware of your current progress and problems. Sharing reports and overviews pulled from your performance measurement system with infoDev, or even giving an infoDev colleague access to the system, is an easy way to facilitate a continuous knowledge exchange. The more you share, the easier it will be for your infoDev counterpart to give you advice and understand your local context. infoDev will use the insights that you share to give you feedback, introduce you to contacts from across its network, and give you additional support suited to your situation.
You should plan far ahead of deadlines for the agreed formal reporting rounds with infoDev. Similar to informal regular exchanges, the regular reporting that you will be expected to conduct should be seamless if your performance measurement system is set up in line with what you agreed with infoDev early on. Formal reporting will include both results reporting (implementation quality/output indicators and value proposition/outcome indicators) as well as other grant reporting requirements such as financial and fiduciary reporting. It takes time for infoDev as your interface to coordinate the World Bank-internal grant reporting process, and so it is good advice to start working towards your reporting deadlines early to accommodate potential follow-up requests and clarifications. infoDev will engage and collaborate with you in this process, and will help you to proactively seek guidance and clear out any uncertainties about the reporting. In other words, you can see the performance measurement system also as an investment to minimize the extra effort for your reporting duties and make it as seamless and smooth as possible.
InfoDev will allocate additional resources and time to support the effort whenever performance measurement and evaluation is geared towards infoDev’s broader goals rather than the immediate goals specified in your business model. When a given indicator is immediately relevant for you to assess the value you provide for your clients (for instance, if you suggested the indicator), infoDev will expect you to budget for business analytics and take care of performance measurement and the evaluation process. This is based on infoDev's belief that in the long-run you need to take full responsibility for your mLab or mHub to make it sustainable. However, there will be instances where infoDev will have a broader evaluation interest, beyond your business model. For instance, infoDev might be interested in indirect effects of your activities on certain components of the local innovation ecosystem, or infoDev might have a separate reporting duty towards its donors relating to inclusive and social innovation goals. If this effect type is not instrumental to your business model and therefore not immediately relevant for you, it is understood that infoDev will support you with the data collection and evaluation. For instance, in these cases, infoDev could send its own evaluators, hire outside help, or make additional budget resources available to you.