WISE INTERVENTIONS

Microbusiness owners in Togo (<50 employees, non-agricultural) completed a personal initiative training designed to facilitate “a mindset of self-starting behavior, innovation, identifying and exploiting new opportunities, goal-setting, planning and feedback cycles, and overcoming obstacles” over three half-day sessions per week across 4 weeks (36 hours of classroom instruction) plus a 3-hour trainer visit to the business once a month for the next four months. As compared to business owners who received a traditional business training focused on “accounting and financial management, marketing, human resource management, and formalization,” businesses in the personal initiative condition showed greater growth in profits over the next two and plus years, and more diversified product lines, greater use of personal initiative, greater capital and labor inputs, greater innovation, and greater access to finance.