Articles by Heather Esper
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Guest Articles
Monday
August 18
2025Heather Esper / Keith Obade / Moses Waweru
Building Smarter Data Practices in Entrepreneurship Support Ecosystems: How Entrepreneurs, Investors and Other Stakeholders Can Drive Systemic Change
Entrepreneurship support ecosystems include a diverse range of actors, from incubators and accelerators to policymakers, impact investors and other funders. But though strengthening these ecosystems is a growing priority in emerging markets, monitoring, evaluation and learning remains a persistent challenge, due in part to a lack of data sharing. Heather Esper at the William Davidson Institute and Keith Obade and Moses Waweru at Villgro Africa explore the reasons various stakeholders collect data, the obstacles that keep this data fragmented and underutilized, and the ways these ecosystems can improve their data practices.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Guest Articles
Wednesday
January 10
2024Lean Thinking isn’t Just for Large Manufacturing Businesses: A Roadmap for Applying it to Small and Medium Enterprises
Toyota developed lean thinking — a rigorous, data-centric approach that aims to optimize business processes by empowering staff to identify and solve problems — in the 1950s. But as Yaquta Fatehi and Heather Esper at the William Davidson Institute explain, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly using lean methodologies to reduce costs, increase efficiency and boost customer satisfaction and profits. They define key concepts and standard practices in lean thinking, and propose a roadmap for applying these approaches to SMEs' operations.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Guest Articles
Monday
September 20
2021Four Insights for Better Measurement: What Businesses Can Learn from the Public and Nonprofit Sectors
In the public and nonprofit sectors, comprehensive monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches are increasingly common – but many small and growing businesses (SGBs) lack the time and resources for these practices. Heather Esper, director of the Performance Measurement and Improvement team at the William Davidson Institute, shares four key data collection and measurement insights from the public and nonprofit worlds that businesses — particularly SGBs — can leverage to improve their decision-making and maximize the social and financial value of their data.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Guest Articles
Monday
September 21
2020Heather Esper / Vava Angwenyi / Monica Cuba / Matthew Guttentag / Mallory St. Claire
Flipping the Script: Why Small and Growing Businesses Should Lead the Researchers – Not the Other Way Around
All too often, global development research hinges on the interest of researchers, rather than the knowledge needs of small and growing businesses and their impacted communities. This can leave entrepreneurs with plenty of reports, but no practical tools for continuing to collect and use data themselves. Analysts at the William Davidson Institute, Gente Del Futuro, Practical Action and ANDE propose a better approach: letting small businesses lead the way.
- Categories
- Technology
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Interviews
Thursday
March 21
2019Getting to the SDGs – And What’s Next for Multi-Sector Collaboration
We live in an era of multi-sector solutions. But it's easy to forget that diverse sectors working closely toward big global development goals is a recent phenomenon that didn’t happen by chance. At a talk at the William Davidson Institute, Tami Kesselman, founder of Aligned Investing Global, discussed several key tipping points that have allowed the business, government, philanthropic and impact investing communities to overcome misaligned priorities and mistrust. Check out her interview and her predictions on what will come next in multi-sector development.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Guest Articles
Tuesday
April 3
2018Rebecca Baylor / Heather Esper / Yaquta Fatehi
Here’s How to Play Matchmaker to Social + Business Metrics ‘Power Couples’
For many businesses and organizations, the idea of measuring their impact can be scary, elusive or just plain boring. But pairing social and business metrics "power couples" can give organizations unique insights to solve key business challenges. In a new report, the William Davidson Institute shares the results of its work with three organizations to demystify data collection of their social impacts. Rebecca Baylor of WDI writes that the team's work proves impact measurement doesn't have to be as hard as it may seem.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Guest Articles
Friday
January 1
2016The State of Assessment: Why the ‘assess or not’ debate continues and how we can move beyond it (Part 1 of 2)
Recent debate has focused on whether businesses should assess social, economic and/or environmental impact. How did we get stuck here? In this two-part series, Heather Esper and Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of the William Davidson Institute explore the evolution of assessment and how to move beyond the paralysis.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Guest Articles
Thursday
October 22
2015The State of Assessment: Moving the conversation forward to accelerate value creation (Part 2 of 2)
Heather Esper and Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of the William Davidson Institute say it's time to stop debating whether businesses should assess social, economic and/or environmental impact, and move on to a conversation about how to extract the most value. They even offer five core activities to accelerate that value.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment