World Bank Management Comments World Bank management welcomes this evaluation. The report is particularly important for the Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (ITE) Global Practice. The two-year-old ITE Practice was created by the Financial and Private Sector Development (FPD) Network as part of a new business model pilot in the World Bank and a response to the rising demand from client countries. It seeks to better integrate the various products and instruments available within the World Bank Group to provide a more programmatic and comprehensive approach to client service, geared toward achieving tangible development impact in the form of new investments, jobs and income opportunities for the poor. The Practice integrates staff from FPD, as well as from other World Bank networks and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) collaborating on the innovation and entrepreneurship agenda. The Practice welcomes the evaluation as a unique opportunity to learn from a systematic and careful review of World Bank Group initiatives within the Practice domain. BROAD CONCURRENCE WITH ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS
Management concurs broadly with the findings and conclusions of the evaluation, in particular (i) the endorsement of innovation and entrepreneurship as a prerequisite for maintaining competitiveness in global markets and a critical factor for growth of developing economies; (ii) the finding that articulating World Bank interventions supporting innovation and entrepreneurship around various thematic areas (such as agriculture and rural development, private sector development, education, and information and communications technology) in the absence of a strategic framework for innovation and entrepreneurship may affect their impact; (iii) the conclusion that projects primarily focused on innovation are more likely to succeed than those just incorporating some components — and useful evidence of the importance of conveying some level of comprehensiveness in project design, discouraging piecemeal interventions; (iv) the notion that innovation policies must be placed in the context of other productivity enhancing policies and should not be considered in isolation from market conditions; and (v) the recognition that no single path to innovation drives development and that countries have used a variety of strategies to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. OTHER OBSERVATIONS
The report does not take a comprehensive look at World Bank Group initiatives supporting entrepreneurship. It makes a deliberate choice to limit its analysis to innovative entrepreneurship with an emphasis on start-ups. A comprehensive framework on entrepreneurship should also consider entry, growth, and exit factors and should not only consider the strengthening of entrepreneurial capabilities, but also incentives. xxvi
World Bank Group Support for Innovation and Entrepreneurship