Growth Impact Pilot

Last registered on August 20, 2018

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Growth Impact Pilot
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000488
Initial registration date
March 23, 2015

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 23, 2015, 11:19 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
August 20, 2018, 7:30 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
BIS

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
PI Affiliation
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
PI Affiliation
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
PI Affiliation
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2014-04-01
End date
2018-09-01
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The Growth Impact Pilot, launched in April 2014, is a research project on the impact of business advice (coaching), supported by the UK Government. The Growth Impact Pilot will assess whether the provision of GrowthAccelerator coaching is the reason why firms on the service achieve high rates of growth, or whether this growth would have happened anyway. It is designed to assess the impact of coaching by comparing two groups:

Group 1: who receive a matched funding grant to spend on leadership and management training.
Group 2: who receive a leadership and management grant AND specialist business coaching services.

Once recruited, businesses will be divided into one of the two groups by a process of random selection. By comparing the performance of the two groups, it will be possible to identify whether coaching really makes a difference for the assisted businesses.

We anticipate that the average intervention will be completed within 4-6 months. It may take several years for the economic impact of the trial to emerge, but monitoring and evaluation will be undertaken at earlier stages.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Booth, Caroline et al. 2018. "Growth Impact Pilot." AEA RCT Registry. August 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.488-4.0
Former Citation
Booth, Caroline et al. 2018. "Growth Impact Pilot." AEA RCT Registry. August 20. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/488/history/33235
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The Growth Impact Pilot gives all participating businesses access to match funding of up to £2,000 for every senior manager to undertake leadership and management training within a choice of the following key areas, including:
- Developing an effective personal leadership and management style
- Leading and managing high performance
- Planning and developing an effective organisation
- Sustaining growth and continuous improvement
- Embedding a culture of innovation
- New market entry

In addition, one-in-two businesses are then randomly selected to receive the additional offer of specialist coaching through GrowthAccelerator, tailored to the needs and barriers that exist within each business. This coaching support will typically involve getting help in one of three areas: access to finance, business development coaching or innovation.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2014-04-01
Intervention End Date
2015-10-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The effects of business coaching will be assessed on a range of indicators:
1. Turnover;
2. Employment;
3. Gross Value Added;
4. A range of behavioural indicators on management skills and practices.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
There is a three stage survey approach to assessing impacts, as follows:
- Wave 1: 3 months, establishing the existing management behaviours before the policy intervention.
- Wave 2: 9 months, assessing changes in impacts and behaviours. Also seeking to attribute changes to to intervention.
- Wave 3: 18 months, assessing economic outcome as a result of the intervention.

Following the surveys, actual outcome data will be tracked.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
400 businesses are expected to be recruited for this trial. To be eligible, businesses need to have turnover between £250,000 and £2 million, and employ between 1 and 249 employees. Using stratified block randomisation, businesses will be assigned into two groups of similar profile with the knowledge and agreement of the business.

The control group will only receive a matched funding grant to spend on leadership and management assistance for its senior management team. The treatment group, in addition to that, will receive specialist business coaching, as well as access to other elements of the GrowthAccelerator service (e.g. workshops and access to a network of their peers). The support will be fully subsidised for both groups, except for the VAT of the service (which can be reclaimed by most participants).
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomisation will be done at weekly (occasionally fortnightly) intervals by a team at the University of York, completely independent of the Growth Impact Pilot Project Team and the operational Consortium delivering the Pilot.
Randomization Unit
Stratified block randomisation will be used for the trial. Unit of randomisation is the firm, stratified by three variables:
- Turnover band
- Number of full-time employees
- Region
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
2 groups of firms.
Sample size: planned number of observations
400 businesses.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
200 businesses treatment, 200 businesses control.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
With 400 businesses recruited, it will be possible to detect an additional impact of 9 percentage points on treated firms' turnover 3 years after the firms complete the support.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials