Experimental Design
The trial will be a completely randomized design with two treatment levels. The treatments conditions and levels will be: i) No Structured Accountability (control group) and ii) Structured Accountability.
The number of entrepreneurs that participate in Start-Up Chile is approximately 100 in each cohort. Therefore, in two years, 400 participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two treatments. In each cohort half of the participants will be randomly assigned to the Structure Accountability Treatment. Obviously, randomization will occur independently in each of the cohorts.
Approximately on a once a month basis the entrepreneurs will meet with an expert (a mentor, SUP Chile executive or a specific industry expert). A meeting scribe will also be present taking notes in every one of these meetings, both control and treatment groups.
The treated group, those subject to structured accountability, will be asked to articulate the strategic tasks to be completed during the following month, and report about their progress from the previous month. That is, the meeting scribe will make sure that the treatment group entrepreneur gets asked “what would you say are the most important tasks you need to work on during the next month?” The scribe will write down the tasks in a document, which will be revised and discussed during the next monthly meeting. The control group meetings will not have any kind of explicit tracking of their tasks. Regardless, if control group entrepreneurs wish to have a copy of the meeting notes (which will be a summary of the meeting conversation), the scribe will make them available.
Besides taking notes of the meeting, the job of the scribe is to verify the fidelity of the treatment. This means that the only ones getting the structured accountability in each one of their meetings are the entrepreneurs on the treated group. Moreover, the scribe will register the number of tasks committed for the next month, the number of tasks from the last meeting in some state of progress, quality of the tasks, and the time spent on structured accountability. For all (treatment and control) meetings, the scribe will register the total duration of the meeting, and the name of participants and their roles.