We launched the Small Firm Diaries because after decades of work trying to help microenterprises to grow into small firms, there was...

To mark International Workers Day, we’re sharing findings and data we collected about employment and jobs in the Small Firm Diaries.

This chart displays data on account usage from our analysis of businesses in the first 4 countries we studied in the Small Firm Diaries—Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Indonesia. Across these countries, we found that most of the small firms are “banked;” that is, the majority of firms in every country had a bank account and used it at least once. But far fewer used that account for the majority of their transactions. Instead, most firm owners still rely heavily on cash. While m

The 2021 Global Index found that Covid has driven the growth of digital payments worldwide, including an increase in digital payments to merchants. How are these global trends playing out in our sample of small firms? In this video we created for Financial Inclusion Week, we sift through data to tell the story of businesses straddling the borderlands between the cash and digital economies. We look into the accounts and transactions of a handful of firms in Nigeria and Colom

There's also a short version, click here if you have just 3 minutes .

As the data come rolling in fast and furious, and questions spawn more questions, we ask each other, how did we get here?

In our last post we talked about the challenge of understanding both how volatile revenues and expenses are for small firms, but more...

When, where, and why fluctuations in income and expenses matter This fall, when we began to dig into early data coming out of the Small...

As part of CFI's Financial Inclusion week, Tim Ogden and Jonathan Morduch discuss why they embarked on the Small Firm Diaries study. They...

In this video, which we made for the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Annual Conference, we walk through summary...

An Ideas Exchange featuring Morgan Hardy Here’s a discussion we recorded with Morgan Hardy, who studies gender gaps in SMEs. Morgan is a...

What should we measure (besides profits) to better understand business success? Why do women choose some sectors over others?

Trust, Trade-offs & Metrics

Links and resources from our latest webinar

And how should size be measured?