Research at the Snider Center

Social grand challenges (e.g., poverty alleviation; access to health care), particularly in emerging economies, are often assumed to require big solutions by big governments or philanthropic aid by non-profit agencies and foundations. This research will challenge this mainstream view by conducting a deep dive into the emergence of the global mobile money industry, which has provided unprecedented financial access for the unbanked (and poorest) population in the world. By gathering and analyzing rich longitudinal data across multiple countries and examining the role of for-profit/non-profit organizations and public agencies in the emergence and diffusion of mobile money, we hope to provide empirical support for two main premises. 

First, to be truly sustainable and scalable, solutions to social grand challenges require enterprising individuals and firms to engage in win-win trade relationships that provide them their livelihoods and enable the focal customer to receive timely, quality, and cost-effective products and services. Second, innovative solutions to grand challenges do not simply emerge through omniscient social planning. Rather, they require a trial-and-error process where all actors who share this purpose have to engage in experimentation and learning by doing. This is because during the nascent stages, creating robust solutions such as mobile money requires for-profit, non-profit, and public actors to navigate through fundamental uncertainty and build relevant knowledge, market infrastructure, and institutions.

The insights of our study will help inform academics, policymakers, and practitioners on processes through which sustainable solutions to social grand challenges emerge as well as the socio-economic benefits to embracing experimentation in a collaborative manner. These insights can also accelerate the emergence and diffusion of solutions to other grand challenges, including reduction of post-harvest loss and access to healthcare in emerging economies.

The Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets is part of the Consortium for Innovation in Post-Harvest Loss and Food Waste Reduction. The consortium also includes the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), the Rockefeller Foundation, Iowa State University, Wageningen University and Research, Volcani Center, Zamorano University, Stellenbosch University, University of São Paulo, University of Nairobi, and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. The consortium’s members will work in tandem with industry and nonprofit organizations to address social, economic and environmental impacts from food loss and waste.

The Snider Center’s involvement builds on our prior work funded by Rockefeller’s YieldWise Imitative that incorporated QUEST honors program students who helped former Maryland Smith professor Christina Elson evaluate the post-harvest loss of mangoes in Kenya. This work focused on the problem of information asymmetry and exchange of information in the supply chain. This same “systems problem” is being explored by the Consortium in an expanded way. The team at the Ed Snider Center working with the Consortium includes research affiliate Dr. Steven T. Sonka, founding director Dr. Rajshree Agarwal, doctoral candidate Audra Wormald and research coordinator Nicholas Appleton.

Enterprise and markets do more to reduce poverty than any other approach tried throughout history. Work on the YieldWise Initiative emphasized that “supply chains don’t just happen.” They are the result of effective entrepreneurial behavior by economic actors across farms, firms and institutions. Our team at the Center in partnership with Sokoine University Graduate Entrepreneurs Cooperative along with Bocconi University is focusing their research on improving entrepreneurial performance within the food and agricultural sectors specifically in Tanzania.

While Japan is often perceived to be a poster child for government promotion of economic development, in fact, Japan’s spectacular economic growth was fueled by entrepreneurship and free markets. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Center research affiliate Dr. Serguey Braguinsky and Dr. Rajshree Agarwal will conduct an in-depth examination of the role played by educated engineering human capital in promoting entrepreneurship and market-oriented growth.

Human capital is a critical ingredient in the discovery of innovations and adoption of technology, but what type of human capital is most important for such activities, and what are the roles of higher-order technical skills, in particular, remain largely unexplored. Studying the interaction between technological opportunity, human capital formation, market demand, and institutional rules is a promising way to better understanding how nations—even today—can take advantage of advanced technologies, as well as develop new, innovative ones.

This survey assessment provides early-stage entrepreneurs with real data to shape effective team building and create relationships critical for success. After entrepreneurial teams take the survey, we debrief them on how trust and information sharing networks influence team dynamics.

Kylie King
Email: kgoodell@rhsmith.umd.edu or kking@champlain.edu

The Ed Snider Center is collaborating with various researchers and industry leaders interested in investigating the emerging market for cannabis. current collaborators include Cindy Phillips, Hemp Analytics, and Martin Lee, Project CBD.