Is SME and entrepreneurship policy having its intended effects? Do the benefits of specific programmes justify their costs? Could these benefits be achieved more cost-effectively through alternative approaches? Evaluation provides the key to answering these questions, by determining the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of a policy or programme in relation to its objectives.
This is particularly important in the field of SME and entrepreneurship policy because questions can legitimately be put as to whether current SME and entrepreneurship policies are fit for purpose, or whether changes are needed in its scope and focus. For example, does the policy mix need to be adjusted or do the enterprises and entrepreneurs targeted need to be modified?
However, reliable impact evaluation is rare in the field of SME and entrepreneurship policy, and less common than in fields such as labour market policy. This remains the case, despite recent improvements in available data and methods for evaluation. One of the reasons is a lack of widespread knowledge among policy makers about how reliable impact evaluation should be taken.
The just-published OECD Framework for the Evaluation of SME and Entrepreneurship Policies seeks to address these issues by making two major contributions. First, it sets out how to achieve reliable impact evaluation in SME and entrepreneurship policy, including offering a six-step scale to judge the reliability of any evaluation or evaluation method. Second, it provides a summary of what is known about policy impacts from international meta-evaluations and a selection of reliable individual evaluations in the field, spanning a wide range of policy areas and OECD countries.
