Billions of US dollars have been spent—by governments, microfinance organizations, and NGOs—on training the owners of small businesses. Traditional programs typically aim to teach practices such as record-keeping, stock control, and simple marketing. But while these do seem to improve the performance of small businesses, most result in little real change, making the impact hard to detect. So, when in late 2012 we were approached to design the impact evaluation of a training program to be offered in Togo under a World Bank loan program, we proposed that the program they had planned—the International Finance Corporation’s Business Edgeprogram—be tested against an alternative. The alternative approach came from partnering with psychologist Michael Frese, who had been working on a personal initiative training program to develop behavior associated with an entrepreneurial mindset, rather than teaching business skills.  — blog.wb.org/blogs