Bridging the “Pioneer Gap”: The Role of Accelerators in Launching High-Impact Enterprises

Despite our current age of unprecedented global wealth, billions of people worldwide still live in poverty. Over the past decade, however, governments, the nonprofit sector, and the business world have explored the ability of small and growing businesses (SGBs) to reduce poverty, particularly in emerging markets. The promise of finding market-based solutions to social problems has generated a good deal of excitement about impact investing-an investment strategy that seeks social/environmental returns in addition to financial returns. According to a 2013 study by J. P. Morgan and the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a total of $17 billion is expected to be deployed into socially beneficial sectors in 2012-2013. 1 However, this capital is not yet reaching many of the innovative small and growing businesses that can help to alleviate poverty through the jobs they create and the products and services they provide. While social enterprises continue to emerge-Village Capital alone has seen over 5,000 applications from impact-focused entrepreneurs worldwide over the last three years-many innovative companies in their early stages have had difficulty getting off the ground. They are still not able to access and take advantage this new flow of capital, or the other types of support and resources they need to succeed.