Global development agenda meets local opportunities: the rise of development­focused entrepreneurship support

Emerging economies provide abundant opportunities for entrepreneurship with social impact, but they often lack the resources to support it. This dilemma has led to the emergence of “ development-focused entrepreneurship support ” (DFES), which is typically provided by development organizations in the Global North, and which targets impact-oriented entrepreneurs operating in the Global South. This study examines, based on rich qualitative data from the U.S., Rwanda and Uganda, how international DFES organizations (iDFESOs) support en- trepreneurs. We show that iDFESOs link entrepreneurship support to development goals, and thereby make entrepreneurs part of development aid chains. Towards this end, iDFESOs build three interrelated support in- frastructures – or “ scaffolds ” : individual resource channels, local ecosystem capacity, and transnational infrastructures. Findings have important implications for entrepreneurship and international development research, while also raising critical questions about new dependencies between Global North and Global South.


Introduction
Fostering entrepreneurial innovation and promoting the success of innovative new ventures has been the focus of considerable research effort (Autio et al., 2014). In recent decades, new providers of entrepreneurship support (ES) have emerged, including university centers, angel investors, accelerators, incubators, and venture capital firms . These organizations support new innovative ventures by financing, training, networking, and providing space (Bergman and McMullen, 2022;Clayton et al., 2018). With the growing role of entrepreneurship in promoting innovation, scholars and practitioners agree that ES organizations are a key facilitator in translating new ideas into more widely adopted solutions (Clayton et al., 2018).
Research on ES has mostly focused on advanced economies where highly educated entrepreneurs develop new technologies, products and services, and acquire resources from ES organizations in the local ecosystems they are embedded in (Spigel, 2017;Spigel and Harrison, 2018;Adams, 2020;Ryan et al., 2020). Yet, entrepreneurs innovate in various domains, including challenging ones such as healthcare, education and energy in emerging economies (Marshall, 2011). Innovations in these areas, specifically in emerging economies, carry a significant potential in creating local economic, social, and environmental value in line with sustainable development goals (Lumpkin et al., 2018). For example, studies show that entrepreneurial efforts in developing and scaling the adoption of energy-efficient cook stoves to substitute open fire have reduced deforestation and led to more sustainable use of energy (Jagger and Jumbe, 2016;Lewis and Pattanayak, 2012).
However, developing countries (or: emerging economies) are often characterized by severe resource and institutional constraints, including lack of funding, underdeveloped technology, and lack of effective political support (Khanna and Palepu, 2000;Harima et al., 2020), thus creating severe obstacles for entrepreneurs seeking critical resources to translate ideas into viable business models (Bruton et al., 2013;Biru et al., 2020). This presents a dilemma: while the demand for innovation is particularly high in territories ripe with social and environmental challenges, the same territories are often ill-equipped to effectively support some of the main actors capable of tackling these issuesentrepreneurs (see e.g. Nyame-Asiamah et al., 2020).
Previous research shows that this dilemma has led entrepreneurs who are either based in or target emerging economy markets to increasingly reach out for globally dispersed resourcesfrom funding to technologies and business support (Desa and Basu, 2013;Harima et al., 2020). At the same time, a growing number of organizations have started to support entrepreneurs that operate in emerging economies and that develop innovative products and services in line with sustainable development goals. Many of these support organizations focus on regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where entrepreneurship is often directly linked to development impact (Devine and Kiggundu, 2016;Maclean et al., 2021). Examples of such organizations include multilateral and bilateral development agencies, major foundations, venture philanthropies, and base-of-the pyramid innovation centers in major research universities. Most of them are headquartered in advanced economies with operations and partners in emerging economies around the world. Their mission is strongly influenced by global development agendas. At the same time, they have adopted various entrepreneurship support practices, such as accelerators, in support of their goal. Despite their growing importance (Zahra et al., 2014;Desa and Basu, 2013;Amezcua et al., 2020), we still lack a more systematic understanding of how they operate (Sutter et al., 2019).
In this study, we argue that these types of support organizations are key drivers of a new support model that we call "development-focused entrepreneurship support" (DFES), which we seek to examine in more detail in this study. We define DFES as support practices aimed at facilitating the founding process and improving the quality of new innovative ventures specifically by promoting their ability to make a positive development impact while being commercially successful. Prior research has begun to study DFES especially at the local level, e.g. impact-oriented local tech hubs Zheng, 2018, 2021;Littlewood and Holt, 2018). However, the work of such local providers is often supported and complemented by international DFES organizations (iDFESOs), which act as intermediaries by connecting entrepreneurs and local DFES providers with global funding sources through various programs, events and other support infrastructures, while infusing entrepreneurship support with an impact and development agenda. They engage in what has been called "scaffolding", i.e. the process of building socio-material infrastructures in support of organizational and system transformation (Casasnovas and Ferraro, 2022;Mair et al., 2016;Orlikowski, 2006). We seek to better understand how these organizations operate, in particular how they set up support infrastructures to promote impact-oriented entrepreneurship. Our research question is: How do international DFES organizations support entrepreneurs in emerging economies and what infrastructures do they create in support of impact-oriented entrepreneurship?
To answer this question, we combine a focused literature review with an explorative case study of iDFESOs supporting entrepreneurs operating in emerging economies, mainly East Africa. We first identify major properties of DFES compared to regular commercial ES. We discuss the emergence of DFES as the combination of three dynamics: the lack of effective local ES in developing regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa (Devine and Kiggundu, 2016), the increasing social impact orientation of ES worldwide (Lall et al., 2020;Nicolopoulou, 2014;Naudé, 2011), and the increasing ES orientation in international development and foreign aid (Ebrahim and Rangan, 2014;Pandey et al., 2017;Chandra, 2018). We also argue that in the new emerging field of DFES, internationally operating intermediaries play a vital, yet under-researched role.
Based on data of iDFESOs and their relationships with global funders, local ES partners and entrepreneurs, we examine their activities in greater detail, in particular their "scaffolding" activities that enable DFES for emerging economy entrepreneurs. We find that iDFESOs engage in three interrelated scaffolding practices: (i) setting up individual resource channels (individual level); (ii) building local capacity (local ecosystem level); and (iii) establishing transnational infrastructures (transnational level). We argue and show empirically that iDFESOs are guided in their approach by a development aid logic that emphasizes partnerships and capacity-building at multiple levels to address social and environmental issues, such as inequality and climate change, in emerging economies. DFES thus becomes a distinct form of ES in emerging economy contexts.
Our study has important implications for future research. First, our elaboration of DFES helps address the demand-supply dilemma of ES in emerging economy contexts (Harima et al., 2020;Biru et al., 2020). We thus extend prior research on effective ES in the context of poverty (Sutter et al., 2019). Second, we connect two previously separate debatesentrepreneurship and international developmentby showing how iDFESOs embed entrepreneurs and ES in development aid chains (see e.g. Watkins et al., 2012), thereby turning new venture support into a vehicle to promote sustainable development. However, we also discuss how DFES may create new dependencies between Global North and Global South, by imposing an entrepreneurship-focused development agenda (see also Kolade et al., 2021).

Entrepreneurship support in developing countries: the demand-supply dilemma
Emerging economies provide numerous opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship, especially in areas such as energy, food supply, education, training, employment and healthcare (Mair and Marti, 2009). Such opportunities arise not least because neither the state nor established businesses have sufficient capacity to provide such services (Doh et al., 2017;Zahra et al., 2008). For example, the exclusion of youth in slums and rural areas from formal training and employment in sub-Saharan Africa has motivated entrepreneurs to engage in "impact sourcing" by recruiting and training such youth for business service jobs (Manning et al., 2017;Kannothra et al., 2018). In general, impactoriented entrepreneurship is considered one of the solutions to extreme poverty since the introduction of new goods, services, markets, and methods can mobilize funding, create jobs, and stimulate innovation with positive social, economic and environmental impact (Sutter et al., 2019;Alvarez et al., 2015).
Studies show that such impact opportunities often attract diaspora entrepreneurs to return home to start a new venture (Avle, 2014), as well as foreign entrepreneurs to create business models to serve base-ofthe-pyramid markets (Marshall, 2011;Zahra et al., 2008). Yet, these entrepreneurs are often confronted with a fundamental problem: the lack of access to capital, technologies and other resources to get their business ideas off the ground (Manolova et al., 2007;Seelos and Mair, 2007;Stephan et al., 2015;Wright et al., 2016). For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, local government programs often fail to effectively allocate funding, provide training or assist with scaling business ideas (Busch and Barkema, 2021;Devine and Kiggundu, 2016;Kolade et al., 2021).
This creates an interesting dilemma: While, on the one hand, emerging economy contexts provide rich opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship with development impact because of the insufficient availability of basic services (e.g. in education, healthcare, employment, food supply), on the other hand, the realization of these opportunities may be severely constrained by the lack of resources and support offered to entrepreneurs in emerging economies. This dilemma has not been well addressed in the growing literature on entrepreneurship support (ES). ES is designed to infuse new and young firms with valuable resources that increase the likelihood of survival and development (Bergman and McMullen, 2022;Ratinho et al., 2020). ES is provided in form of financial capital, business and technological expertise, and market access. ES organizations, often lean and small (Cohen, 2013), connect entrepreneurs with resources (bridging) and protect them from external threats by providing them with legitimacy and social capital (buffering) (Amezcua et al., 2013;van Rijnsoever, 2020). According to Woolley (2014), such support addresses the fundamental problem that entrepreneurial opportunities are not directly "accessible", but only through some level of institutional guidance. ES is designed to institutionally facilitate this process.
ES providers primarily support commercial entrepreneurship in advanced economies. They include government agencies, entrepreneurship centers, business incubators, venture capitalists, business angels, universities, and science parks Clayton et al., 2018;Bergman and McMullen, 2022). For example, incubators support new ventures for a number of years, thereby shielding them from competitive environments (Lall et al., 2013(Lall et al., , 2020Nicolopoulou, 2014;Amezcua et al., 2013). Accelerators provide programs of mentorship, peer-to-peer learning, and investment facilitation (Cohen et al., 2019b;Cohen, 2013;Pandey et al., 2017). Oftentimes, these organizations are co-located and interlinked in so-called "entrepreneurial ecosystems" (Spigel, 2017;Adams, 2020;Thompson et al., 2018), which traditionally support commercial entrepreneurs that are embedded in these ecosystems and that target local and regional markets (Spigel, 2017).
By comparison, ES in emerging economies, such as sub-Saharan Africa, is much less developed (Biru et al., 2020). Some scholars even argue that institutionalized entrepreneurship and innovation support is a "Global North" idea that does not directly apply to the "Global South" (e.g. Jiménez and Zheng, 2018). In fact, some argue that the main mechanism of ES in the "Global South" are family and kinship networks (Khayesi et al., 2014;Zelekha and Dana, 2019). Notably, there is evidence of a growing diffusion of institutional ES in emerging economies, including tech and innovation hubs in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Zheng, 2018, 2021;Littlewood and Holt, 2018), and accelerators in India (Goswami et al., 2018). However, effective local support, including capital and training (Kolade et al., 2021), is often missing, which has been a major cause of brain drain (Nyame-Asiamah et al., 2020). Even if funding is available, it is often not allocated to ventures with high growth potential due to corruption and nepotism (see e.g. Biru et al., 2020;Evans et al., 2018). In addition, with a few exceptions (e.g. Busch and Barkema, 2021), there is typically a lack of support for scaling entrepreneurial ideas (Marchant, 2018). Also, in many emerging economies entrepreneurial careers are not particularly valued, compared to e.g. careers in the government sector, which has further discouraged entrepreneurs from pursuing opportunities (Biru et al., 2020). These challenges are further amplified for entrepreneurs focused on innovation in development domains (McMullen, 2011). Studies indicate that raising capital for development-focused ventures can be particularly difficult in emerging economies (Lall et al., 2020;Karanda and Toledano, 2018).
Facing this situation, emerging economy entrepreneurs in general and those interested in impact in particular are forced to seek resources and support from outside their local ecosystem and target market (Hoyos and Angel-Urdinola, 2019). In turn, a new community of globally dispersed ES providers has emerged, including foundations, university centers, and fellowship organizations, that have the potential to support entrepreneurs in developing countries (Pandey et al., 2017;Nicholls and Cho, 2006;Nicholls and Cho, 2006;Nicholls, 2010). They represent a new type of what we call "development-focused entrepreneurship support", whose properties and emergence we discuss in more detail next.

The rise of development-focused entrepreneurship support
We define development-focused entrepreneurship support (DFES) as support practices aimed at facilitating the founding process and improving the quality of new ventures especially by promoting their ability to make a development impact while being commercially successful. The rise of DFES has been noted in recent studies: Lall et al. (2020) observe that entrepreneurship support (ES) programs are increasingly centered around impact and focus on marginalized sectors and regions. Nicolopoulou (2014) find that new innovative ventures are increasingly expected to address social issues, and that, at the same time, development initiatives make increasing use of incubator and accelerator programs. One example of DFES is Ashokaa so-called "social accelerator" that offers stipends to selected entrepreneurs -"Ashoka fellows" -who develop solutions in various development fields, such as education, healthcare and poverty alleviation (Pandey et al., 2017). Ashoka is active in more than 70 countries and focuses on supporting impact-oriented new ventures (Chandra, 2018).
DFES is thus increasingly provided, on the one hand, by "conventional" ES organizations, such as tech hubs, which combine traditional roles of facilitating knowledge transfer and collaboration with a development and impact agenda Zheng, 2018, 2021;Littlewood and Holt, 2018). The mainstreaming of concepts such as "social impact" and "sustainable development goals" (OECD, 2013) is an important driver. On the other hand, DFES is provided by development organizations that were formerly focused on development aid, technology transfer and capacity building. Examples include multilateral and bilateral agencies as well as foundations, venture philanthropies, and emerging economies focused university centers that increasingly include incubators and accelerators in their development initiatives. The growing link between ES and international development is central to our understanding of the rise of DFES, especially in the context of developing regions. While the diffusion of an impact agenda in ES has been studied to some extent Zheng, 2018, 2021;Littlewood and Holt, 2018), the increasing role of entrepreneurship in international development is much less understood. Traditionally, development aid was conceptualized as top-down, government-led transfer of established technologies and economic practices from rich to poor countries (Jue, 2009;Birn, 2014). However, the effectiveness of such top-down approaches was increasingly called into question (Naudé, 2011), because many development projects would neither sufficiently address local needs nor reach beneficiary groups (Rahaman and Khan, 2017;Ika et al., 2020;Easterly, 2006). One recent example is the donor-led push to increase Internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa as a universal solution to promoting employment (Friederici et al., 2017). In recent years, however, international organizations and development agencies have moved away from this approach, not least because of budgetary constraints (Chandra, 2018), by incorporating a greater variety of actors in designing and implementing development initiatives. This includes not only NGOs (see e.g. Van Wijk et al., 2020), but also firms which have increasingly become a partner, contractor and beneficiary of development programs (Gautier et al., 2018;Naudé, 2011;OECD, 2013). Over time, so-called "aid chains" (Watkins et al., 2012) and transnational networks of actors (Viterna and Robertson, 2015) have emerged that are typically composed of global donors supporting various international organizations that contract with private and public partner organizations at the national and local level.
As part of this larger trend in development, there has been an "entrepreneurial turn" from top-down foreign aid to more bottom-up development initiatives (Kolade et al., 2021;Easterly, 2006;Chandra, 2018), promoting entrepreneurial solutions to development problems (Jue, 2009). In other words, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen by development organizations as a vehicle to promote effective innovation on the ground (Yunus et al., 2010;Jue, 2009;Chandra, 2018), not least in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa (Devine and Kiggundu, 2016). As a result, more attention has been paid to the potential of entrepreneurs in developing innovations with developmental impact (Chandra, 2018;Hoyos and Angel-Urdinola, 2019;Karanda and Toledano, 2018;Nicolopoulou, 2014). In addition, with the growing involvement of tech entrepreneurs in philanthropy, venture capital practices have been adopted in this new field leading to so-called transformational philanthropy supporting startups in emerging economies to make a developmental impact (Maclean et al., 2021).
As a result, two previously separate domains have become increasingly interconnected. Not only does ES increasingly address questions of "impact" and "development", but at the same time, development programs increasingly take on principles of ES (Chandra, 2018). As shown on Fig. 1, this has led to the emergence of the new DFES space in which (i) local entrepreneurial opportunities become associated with local development impact opportunities; (ii) global ES practices become part of and get affected by global development agendas, and (iii) the evaluation of local opportunities for impact and entrepreneurship is increasingly affected by a combination of global development goals and global ES practices. As we detail below, these dynamics are further driven by international DFES organizations (iDFESOs), which provide critical resources (capital, expertise), both directly and indirectly, to entrepreneurs targeting emerging economy markets. While scholars have begun to study these organizations (see e.g. Gautier et al., 2018;Birn, 2014), we examine more deeply how they operate. Especially we are interested in how they expand the capacity of resource-constrained local entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, to provide critical resources to entrepreneurs and which organizational infrastructures they put in place to do so.
More specifically, we are interested in how iDFESOs develop support infrastructures that facilitate the provision of DFES. As indicated by Fig. 1, DFES is a complex form of organizational sponsorship (see in general Dutt et al., 2016;Pahnke et al., 2015), as it combines ES with a social impact agenda, while at the same time bringing global development agendas to local contexts. DFES can thus be seen as an "interstitial field". Similar to temporary "interstitial spaces" (Furnari, 2014(Furnari, , 2016, DFES cuts across institutional (and even geographical) boundaries by linking logics and practices of the fields of ES and development. Yet, unlike more temporary spaces, DFES has established as a more permanent field in its own right. iDFESOs have played a central role as catalysts in building and maintaining this field. They have done so, as we show in detail next, by engaging in "scaffolding", which denotes the building of flexible, more or less temporary infrastructures assisting processes of collective learning and systemic change (Mair et al., 2016;Orlikowski, 2006;Casasnovas and Ferraro, 2022;Gehman et al., 2022). Scaffolding may involve the building of infrastructures at multiple levels bridging different fields and supporting beneficiaries in developing more sustainable business models and solutions for pressing local problems (Sutter et al., 2017). Thus, scaffolding is a form of capacitybuilding (Sen, 1999) as it serves to mobilize resources, create new connections, and facilitate learning among various actors in the process of change (Mair et al., 2016;Gehman et al., 2022;Casasnovas and Ferraro, 2022). Next, we examine scaffolding activities of iDFESOs in greater detail, based on rich empirical data from iDFESOs targeting emerging economy entrepreneurs.

Data and methodology
We adopt a qualitative nested multi-case study approach to examine how international DFES organizations (iDFESOs) support entrepreneurs in emerging economies and what infrastructures they create in support of impact-oriented entrepreneurship. Qualitative methods in general, and case studies in particular, can be used to explore complex phenomena about which little is known or about which a novel understanding is needed (Eisenhardt, 1989;Strauss and Corbin, 1998;Yin, 2003).
Our sample focuses on infrastructure-building activities, i.e. scaffolding, of eight iDFESOs. Selecting appropriate cases to theorize about new phenomena is critical (Eisenhardt, 1989;Yin, 2003). All selected iDFESOs follow a development agenda, operate internationally, and engage in initiatives in support of entrepreneurship in emerging economies. We included in our sample iDFESOs of various organizational forms, such as bilateral agencies, transformative venture philanthropies, specialized university centers, and international NGOs. However, regardless of their organizational form, all iDFESOs have in common their specific position in development aid chains (Watkins et al., 2012) vis-à-vis other actors. Fig. 2 gives an overview of what constitutes the chain. Correspondingly, Fig. 3 in the discussion section expands on Fig. 2 by elaborating on the specific scaffolding mechanisms enabling DFES (highlighted box), as a result of which entrepreneurs become part of the aid chain. Next, we introduce briefly the roles each participant plays in the chain.
International donors. These are organizations and individuals whose mission is to implement global development agendas and who provide funding and expertise to iDFESOs to conduct their projects and programs. Funding is provided mostly in form of donations or grants. Wellknown examples of international donors include multilateral and bilateral development organizations (UNDP, UNEP, USAID), foundations (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation), and universities (MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley), as well as high net worth individuals.
iDFESOs. iDFESOs, which we focus on in this study, provide a combination of funding, technological expertise, mentorship, contacts and management expertise to entrepreneurs and local ES partners, and they build specific infrastructures to do so. They are central to linking international donors to entrepreneurs and local beneficiaries. As part of it, they develop specialized programs and events, organize partnerships, run ES initiatives, monitor outcomes, and report to donors. Table 1 provides an overview of iDFESOs (anonymous) we selected for this study. Table 1 summarizes their mission, and lists some of their donors and partners. It also informs about who we interviewed for this study.
Local ES partners. These are organizations that iDFESOs partner with to run ES initiatives, such as accelerator programs. ES partners often directly support entrepreneurs. Most ES partners originate and operate in emerging economies. Examples include local incubators, accelerators, youth entrepreneurship centers, technology transfer centers, and community partners.
Entrepreneurs. These are individuals that engage in creating and scaling new ventures. Typically, entrepreneurs are not part of development aid chains (see e.g. Watkins et al., 2012). However, thanks to support services provided by iDFESOs and local ES partners, especially those new ventures that promise to combine commercial success with measurable social and environmental impact become integrated in aid chains as their business models serve various development goals.
Local beneficiaries. These are organizations, communities, and individuals that benefit from the products and services provided by entrepreneurs in line with development goals.
Following Cohen et al. (2019a), we adopted a nested data collection design by including data not only from iDFESOs, but, if available, from local partner organizations and entrepreneurs participating in related programs. This allowed us to better understand how the operation of iDFESOs is embedded in the aid chain. We conducted 33 interviews that were directly related to our research question (see Table 1). We use letters from the Greek alphabet to label the iDFESOs throughout our study. All interviews were semi-structured and focused on understanding ES and infrastructure-building practices of iDFESOs and local partners. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. We also screened relevant archival data on DFES, and participated in DFES events and programs, which helped us develop a robust understanding of DFES in practice (Yin, 2003).
Our data collection process comprised of four major phases. Each phase was informed by prior data analysis and discussion as we grew our knowledge about the phenomenon in focus (Charmaz, 2008). In the first phase, we collected data mainly on one iDFESO -Alpha Center, a U.S.based university center that is involved in ES in the United States as well as several emerging economies. We chose Alpha Center as an initial case because the center has been supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of poverty in emerging economies for more than 20 years. We conducted interviews with Alpha Center's staff and managers who work with entrepreneurs and who design support programs for them. As part of our nested data collection approach, we also conducted interviews with international new ventures participating in programs, events, and projects run by Alpha Center and their partners, to better understand how their involvement shaped their business idea. This data collection was complemented by an archival analysis of reports and documentation, such as memos, proposals, and presentations. Following Charmaz (2008), we engaged in data collection and data analysis simultaneously, as this approach is "particularly well suited for studying uncharted, contingent, or dynamic phenomena" (p. 155). As we analyzed interviews, we gained two major insights. First, entrepreneurs who participate in Alpha Center's programs attract resources from various development organizations that engage in entrepreneurship support; thus, this phenomenon reaches well beyond Alpha Center. Second, we realized that ES at Alpha Center is highly experimental and goes beyond direct support of entrepreneurs. These findings were not explored much in development or entrepreneurship research, so we decided to further develop our research in an iterative way to better understand the landscape of DFES.
In the second phase, we extended our reach and increased our sample of iDFESOs. Using a snowball sampling approach (Von Hippel et al., 2009), we asked entrepreneurs whom we previously interviewed to introduce us to representatives of iDFESOs they have engaged with. As a result, in 2016-2017, we conducted semi-structured interviews with various U.S.-based iDFESOs. Interviews with iDFESOs' representatives were focused on understanding their involvement in ES, the design of their ES initiatives, partnerships, and outcomes.
In the third phase, we extended our focus from iDFESOs' programs that involve entrepreneurs as participants to include all programs and projects that focus on ES in general. These include DFES programs targeting representatives of other accelerators and incubators; events that bring together iDFESOs; DFES programs run by multinational firms that focus on base-of-the-pyramid markets, and so on. At this stage of data collection, one of the authors became a participant observer at two Alpha Center programs that were focused on entrepreneurial ecosystem development in emerging economies. Following our nested approach, this author conducted interviews with representatives of participating ESOs, including ES centers from Morocco, Brazil, and India. In addition, this author participated in several events, including regional meetings conducted by Kappa Network, a global network that supports social entrepreneurs in emerging economies.
In the fourth phase, two field trips were conducted by one author in Kigali (Rwanda) and Kampala (Uganda) in 2018, to further study how iDFESOs support entrepreneurs and local ESOs in emerging economies. Both field trips included series of interviews with entrepreneurs, incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces, and university representatives. For example, this author interviewed entrepreneurs taking part in Alpha Center's programs. This author also attended several events, including three pitching events organized by universities and social incubators. In addition, this author conducted an interview with the founder of Epsilon Consulting, a Uganda-based incubator that was launched by European funders; Delta Coaching, a Rwanda-based ESO affiliated with a U.S.-based NGO that works with entrepreneurs from Africa; and university partners of Gamma Award, a U.S.-based university-affiliated iDFESO, in Rwanda and Uganda. Data collection was complemented by an archival analysis of various reports on entrepreneurial ecosystems in sub-Saharan Africa.
Data analysis was done in three steps (see Table 2, see similar Van Wijk et al., 2020). First, data was aggregated and cross-tabulated to identify key engagements of iDFESOs. This was an open coding process following a grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Second, following Strauss and Corbin (1998), first and second order codes were developed, informed by prior research on development partnerships, scaffolding, and ES. We paid special attention to various practices iDFESOs engage in to connect entrepreneurs with resource channels, directly and indirectly, and to thereby embed DFES in the development aid chain. We noticed that the various activities iDFESOs engage in are highly experimental. Categorizing major scaffolding practices across iDFESOs was therefore challenging. We thus had to strike a balance between finding categories that are sufficiently distinct and yet inclusive enough to incorporate the various empirical examples we found. Third, we associated second-order codes with three types of scaffolding: (i) setting up individual resource channels; (ii) building local capacity; and (iii) establishing transnational infrastructures. Inspired by prior scaffolding research (Sutter et al., 2017), we focused on DFES infrastructures at different "levels" of support respectivelyindividual entrepreneur (i), local ecosystem (ii) and transnational (iii). Based on that we developed an integrated visual model that shows how micro-processes of scaffolding are embedded in the macro-structure of development aid chains.

Findings
We find that iDFESOs engage in three interrelated forms of scaffolding: setting up individual resource channels (individual level); building local capacity (local ecosystem level); and establishing transnational infrastructures (transnational level). We now discuss them in detail. As evidence, we provide "power quotes" in the main text, and additional "proof quotes" in Table 3 (Pratt, 2009).

Setting up individual resource channels
The first type of scaffolding iDFESOs engage in is setting up individual resource channels for entrepreneurs in line with the development agenda of global funders. Such resource channels are set up either directly with participating entrepreneurs, or through local partner organizations. Important examples of such scaffolding are cohort-based accelerator programs that iDFESOs set up to channel resources to selected ventures. Next we discuss why and how iDFESOs organize these programs and what effects these initiatives have on entrepreneurs and their ventures.

Running cross-border programs for impact-oriented ventures
A central form of individual resource channels are cross-border programs that iDFESOs set up to directly reach impact-oriented entrepreneurial ventures operating in emerging economies. These cohortbased programs bring together selected participants for a period from several months to a year, provide training and networking, and encourage networking among program alumni. A cross-border support program can be designed as an accelerator program, a fellowship, a prize, or an award.
In terms of the main focus of support, iDFESOs set up cross-border programs with the intention to support scaling, commercialization, and further dissemination of development-focused innovations. Our interviews reveal that one major motivation for cross-border programs to come about was the growing dissatisfaction among iDFESOs about the disconnect between the development of new technologies for base-of-  Jue, 2009). The following quote by a manager from an iDFESO illustrates the increasing focus of global development organizations on promoting entrepreneurship as a way to implement development goals: "We realized that even if our intervention results in an innovative solution, for example, a specific agricultural machine, we leave the innovator without any support in the process of broad implementation of innovation. Of course, there are certain ways how an innovative solution for a local issue could be implemented, such as word of mouth or communities. But in many cases we realize that we sponsor the invention rather that the innovation process." One example of a cross-border program that supports impactoriented ventures operating in emerging economies is the accelerator program by Alpha Center. As part of their mission, Alpha Center began to support entrepreneurship as a means to implement various development goals, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia. In the beginning of 2010s, Alpha Center launched its accelerator program in support of local entrepreneurs in emerging markets who develop poverty-alleviation focused products and services at scale. This program focuses on two types of entrepreneursgraduates of a U.S.-based university, which Alpha Center is affiliated with, that launch new ventures, and locally embedded entrepreneurs in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, India, and other countries. The core of the program is an accelerator model. It has a limited duration of one year; it is cohort based; and it provides its participants with access to mentorship and education. However, the Table 2 Data structure: first and second-order codes and aggregated themes.

First order codes
Second order codes Aggregate theme -Extending activities from innovation to entrepreneurship support -Raising funding for entrepreneurship support programs from donors/funders -Selecting impact-oriented innovation-based ventures from various countries who aim to operate in base-of-the-pyramid -Focusing on poverty alleviation as an ultimate impact -Focusing on selecting potentially scalable solutions -Organizing cohort-based accelerator type programs -Providing non-equity grants to selected entrepreneurs -Providing business model training to entrepreneurs -Providing monitoring and evaluation training to entrepreneurs -Providing participatory design training -Demanding stakeholder analysis from entrepreneurs -Helping entrepreneurs in designing theory of change -Connecting entrepreneurs to alumni from previous cohorts -Helping entrepreneurs become local entrepreneurship support actors, such as mentors Running cross-order programs for impact-oriented ventures Setting up individual resource channels (individual level) -Using existing partners in emerging economies to help with selection process in these regions -Looking for new partners with entrepreneurship support expertise in emerging economies to run local ES programs -Developing partnerships with hospitals in emerging economies to provide entrepreneurs with first-hand information about local needs -Hiring international development consultants to conduct market entry analysis training for entrepreneurs -Organizing pools of mentors from various countries Forming program-based alliances with specialized ESOs.
-Recognizing lack of local networking in support of entrepreneurship in emerging economies -Designing new experimental programs that involve representatives of local ES as participants -Providing local ESOs with grants -Providing local ESOs with training on business model development, participatory design, fundraising -Promoting local ecosystem development to donors as a theory of change -Designing ES programs that delegate preparation of local entrepreneurs to global competition selection to local partners -Engaging corporations that operate in emerging economies in supporting base-of-thepyramid entrepreneurship Catalyzing the development of earlystage ES capacity.
Building local capacity (local ecosystem level) -Focusing on the regions with strong partner network to introduce new entrepreneurship support methods -Conducting regular events in emerging economies -Hiring local staff to manage local networking -Utilizing brand and status to bring local participants -Encouraging local ESOs to share best practices -Co-organizing events with local ESOs Catalyzing network building of local ESOs.
-Organizing events that bring participants from multiple countries -Bringing participants from entrepreneurs to donors -Designing program that speaks to needs of all participants involved -Launching awards to best entrepreneurs and best ESOs -Provide grants to entrepreneurs and ESOs to participate in global events -Organize poster presentations where ESOs present novel programs Organizing and sponsoring global events Establishing transnational infrastructures (transnational level) -Recognizing a need of entrepreneurs to find funding opportunities in one place -Recognizing a need of donors/funders to get reliable information about entrepreneurs in emerging economies -Designing platform based on learning about the needs of funders and entrepreneurs -Launching regular newsletters that feature funding opportunities -Developing partnerships with key funders to market their funding offerings -Raising funding to establish an informational platform that brings together entrepreneurs and funders Creating digital sharing platforms "So, we've been also doing workshops, lectures, trying to build up the ecosystem of designing [with social impact] in our country. So, with former students, we've been making the connection as well to private sector, public sector as well. And then the entrepreneurs as well as a lot of these startups.
[…] Capacity building is part of what we are doing because we want to build and support entrepreneurs, support education and also the education system to be able to incorporate these [ "When I was at Alpha Center's annual conference, I was talking to one of Alpha Center's people about the bicycle powered base pressure which they have apparently, and they tried it on Tanzania and they're saying there is no demand for it. But to me, if I look at the business case in Uganda, I think it has a pretty good business case."

Local Manager of Epsilon Consulting in Uganda:
"There's different events that we've been a part of. Some very design-focused events.
[…] There is this big design event that happens every year. And brings on different designers from all over Africa, demonstrating their work, presenting there. So, we've done that before.
[…], where we invited partners from different sectors, the public sector, private sector, SME, some entrepreneurial start-ups and basically trying to addresscommunicate design. Make people a bit more aware about how they can use them." Creating digital sharing platforms A representative of Omega Platform: "We are a project that was started by several development agencies […] So our mission is to close the gap between the growing number of funders who are interested in supporting social innovators and entrepreneurs in say India, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Ethiopia and entrepreneurs themselves […] We collect information from funders about their calls and opportunities and also from entrepreneurs who were previously funded […] Our positioning is that we are a technology platform that provides easy access to up-to-date information about innovations and funding opportunities in emerging markets. Entrepreneurs can also easily update their profile and share about achieving key milestones […] And we've been working these last months on adding new funders and new entrepreneurs to the platform, with help coming from consultants who do monitoring and evaluation for us." program design also includes international development practices. For example, instead of providing financial resources to a start-up in exchange of equity, the program provides a $20,000 grant to selected ventures. Educational components of the program include trainings on specific innovation practices, such as participatory design methods as well as monitoring and evaluation practices, applied by Alpha Center in its international development programs. Other examples of similar programs include the various undertakings of UNICEF Venture Fund, Toilet Accelerator by Toilet Board Coalition, PACT Ventures, and Care Scale X Design Accelerator. These organizations seek to achieve their goals through developing various fixed-term programs in support of entrepreneurs that share an interest in impact and that operate in emerging economies. These programs however are not limited to entrepreneurs in emerging economies, but also target entrepreneurs from advanced economies interested in developing business models in areas such as agriculture, early diagnostics, and energy, for application in developing countries. One example are accelerator programs run by Beta Solution, a Massachusetts-based non-profit that provides startup acceleration expertise to major foundations and bilateral agencies. Such alliances connect the logic of international development with global startup practices. They often result in joint programs aimed at supporting fixedterm cohorts based on educational components focusing on scalable business ideas.
In general, these programs increase the resource availability for high impact and high growth potential ventures targeting emerging economies. Yet, they involve a comprehensive selection process to identify new ventures that have best chances to address social and environmental issues at scale. For example, the call for proposals often requires answering questions about the innovation potential to address specific issues in developing countries; the differentiation of innovations from available solutions; the team and its capabilities; and many more. These proposals and applications are analyzed by a panel of external and internal evaluators consisting of successful entrepreneurs, international development consultants, and representatives of corporations, donors, and government agencies. In terms of geographical focus, these programs have an implicit focus on selecting entrepreneurs operating in emerging economies and implementing their innovative technologybased solution in the context of poverty. However, entrepreneurs are selected from around the world.
The resources provided to selected participants include financial resources, for example, a grant, seed investment, or an award; knowledge resources, such as specific methodologies to develop a market, design a scaling strategy, and measure social impact; social capital resources, such as access to global networks; and human capital resources, such as interns and mentors (see also example in Table 3). Program designs often combine elements and practices from international development and ES and blend regular ES training, such as business model development, product-market fit, market entry, with development training, including monitoring and evaluation practices, stakeholder analysis, and theory of change training. Thus, such support programs provide not only financial resources but also expose participants to specific norms, practices, and models of behavior.
While promoting scalable business models, these cross-border programs also promote the social impact agenda of new ventures, including social justice, sustainability and empowerment. One example is Box (name changed), an international social venture operating between the U.S., Italy, and Rwanda that provides affordable clean water and renewable energy in remote areas. In 2017, Box was selected to participate in several US-based accelerator programs. Participating in these programs helped Box founders develop a subscription business model around selling electricity as a service. Mentors advised to test the model in one of the markets they want to operate in. Based on their prior experience, Box's founders decided to test it in Rwanda. After engaging with mentors that have an international development background, the founders decided to modify the business model. For example, they launched community-building activities, such as providing jobs for women, and included various social impact indicators into their value proposition. This added social impact value and made it more appealing to global funding organizations. In 2018, this helped Box raise seed funding from a pool of investors including a commercial bank in Rwanda, which provides seed and debt funding to growth-oriented international impact-oriented ventures.
We also found that after participating in such programs, entrepreneurs may engage in ES activities themselves. One example is the Uganda-based venture Energy (name changed), a cook stove start-up that took part in Alpha Center's accelerator program. The Energy founder was selected because the venture was on the path to scale its operations, looking for external solutions to increase marketing and to establish sales outlets. At that time the founder did not see herself as "impact-focused". Instead, she was mainly interested in getting her business going. The Energy founder remembers: "In becoming a participant in Alpha Center's accelerator, I was able to get a business mentor-and then also a technical mentor from the engineers assigned to me, one of the assigned specialist in the lab who would come to Uganda to support us through the period of the program.
[…] That is one of the things that really helped us test our products.
[…] The [business] mentor helped me to be able to work on my finances and able to understand what it means to have a capital." This program not only connected the Energy founder to other participants, investors, and accelerators, but also shaped her identity as an entrepreneur. More specifically, she became more aware that her product brings various benefits to communities and that her success as a female entrepreneur could serve as a role model for other women in Uganda and East Africa. This global exposure helped her get selected as the winner of a prestigious African entrepreneurship award. Over time, the Energy founder has become an ambassador of female entrepreneurship. She gets invited to panels in the U.S. and Europe to promote women entrepreneurs. Most recently, she got involved in building a new university program, together with partners, to create, what she calls, a "new breed of entrepreneurs". In a similar manner, other entrepreneurs whom we interviewed became ES agents. Over time, one of the Box founders started to disseminate experience and expertise, advising other startups, and became a mentor for innovators in leading U.S. universities, and a judge at start-up competitions.

Forming program-based alliances with specialized ESOs
IDFESOs often collaborate with ES partners in emerging economies to implement their programs. Some iDFESOs develop internal ES expertise to conduct cross-border programs by hiring professional ES managers or by training development managers to provide ES services. These iDFESOs often engage with local ESOs rather informally in the selection process when iDFESOs consult with local ESOs in the process of screening applicants. This is often the case when relatively small iDFE-SOs, such as university centers or NGOs, run cross-border programs.
In contrast, when large-scale donors, such as multilateral agencies, bilateral agencies, and major foundations, get involved, cross-border programs tend to be implemented through formal partnerships with both iDFESOs and specialized local ESOs. For example, when accelerators are run in a particular country, iDFESOs design and conduct such programs in collaboration with local ESOs that have practical sectorspecific knowledge. One interesting example is the collaboration of a large U.S. bilateral agency with Delta Coaching, a Rwanda-based ESO that generates training and business development opportunities for African entrepreneurs. Delta Coaching serves as intermediary for a U.S. bilateral agency in helping them set up a program with the Rwandan government program to support entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector with Delta Coaching serving as the local 'accelerator partner'. At the time of data collection, the government program supported nine agricultural businesses, from rice processing to dairy, using Delta Coaching's services. More specifically, Delta Coaching gets paid by the US bilateral agency for its accelerator services, and the start-ups get grants from the agency so that they can take classes at Delta Coaching for free: "We partner with an agency's project that supports businesses along the agricultural value chain in Rwanda. Local businesses get a portion of grant and they have to do business development before they get the entire amount of grant they were awarded. But the agency is not an accelerator. So, they hired us to run the accelerator program" Another interesting example is the collaboration between Sigma Link, a Rwandan branch of a global social entrepreneurship incubator, with a UN agency. For example, Sigma Link not only provides education and consultancy services to its members, but also co-organizes social innovation projects under the umbrella of larger development themes. Through partnerships with various global NGOs, universities and corporations, Sigma Link has created a vibrant environment for the exchange of innovation and entrepreneurship practices and resources. For example, the UN agency has taken an interest in developing the capacity of farmers to better respond to climate change. They selected Sigma Link as their innovation partner. With the help of the UN agency funding, and in collaboration with local government agencies, Sigma Link ran a hackathon in Rwanda to bring together developers to create smart ways of improving the dissemination of climate and weather information to farmers. Part of this undertaking was the development of mobile applications for easy access to weather information: "This is about bringing developers and programmers together to tackle challenges. It's mostly testing technologies to improve the connection of climate data and also prototyping apps to disseminate this data. They send information to the farmers or to vulnerable populations in general." This is an example of an alliance that brings together actors from various fields with the purpose to address development issues through entrepreneurship. Sigma Link thereby intermediates between a global development agency and innovative entrepreneurs through their local operations. Specifically, Sigma Link translates the lack of local telecommunication infrastructurehere, limited access of farmers to reliable weather datainto an entrepreneurial opportunity for local developers. Thereby Sigma Link sets up linkages with universities, government agencies, and development agencies, and also informs these linkages with a 'central issue', including climate change, which, in the long run, impacts the direction of entrepreneurial activities. Such alliances therefore help entrepreneurs translate development agendas into local opportunities.
To summarize, setting up individual resource channels is one of the key enabling factors of DFES and a critical form of scaffolding supporting high-impact entrepreneurship. Towards that goal, iDFESOs set up programs that connect entrepreneurial ideas with larger development agendas through selecting high impact-oriented and high growth potential ventures. These programs are often launched in partnership with specialized ESOs. In addition, as an indirect effect, selected entrepreneurs themselves often turn to ES activities acting as knowledge intermediaries and mentors.

Building local capacity
The second form of scaffolding iDFESOs engage in is related to local capacity building in support of entrepreneurship in emerging economies. In particular, iDFESOs design initiatives with a purpose to strengthen local ES capacity through dedicated events and support networks. Such initiatives have been critical means of sharing knowledge, resources and practices across geographic boundaries. Similar to cross-border programs, these local ecosystem-focused initiatives often link local resource needs to global development agendas and related funding opportunities.
Above we discussed how iDFESOs set up individual resource channels for entrepreneurs through cross-border programs. Yet, these programs are often temporary and their long-term effects on entrepreneurship in contexts of poverty are often delayed or unknown. With growing knowledge of the importance of innovative impactoriented entrepreneurship for addressing development goals, iDFESOs have started to consider local ES systems as a focus of scaffolding and to engage in initiatives aimed at strengthening local ES capacity. For example, Alpha Center's managers and researchers considered enhancing the development of local ES networks as a critical step for Alpha Center to achieve its mission. As one of Alpha Center's program managers explained: "Alpha Center has consistently over the course of its history found that, because we're based in the U.S., our bandwidth is limited. So unless we just commit to working with the same individual innovators and entrepreneurs for a decade, because that's how long it really takes for someone to go through the arc, someone else have to also work with them for them to be successful… We started doing that work by investing in individual local institutions, and we have realized that we can have more influence over the success of that innovating entrepreneur, if we actually have touch points with multiple institutions, help build connections between them, try to inspire them, and give them some tools for thinking about how they could actually coordinate and work together." In general, local entrepreneurial ecosystems are developing rapidly in emerging economies (see for example, Goswami et al., 2018). Yet, ecosystems supporting impact-oriented new ventures are less developed. Thus, the focus on local ES capacity building has become important in DFES initiatives as it allows strengthening ESOs' capacity to support colocated ventures, providing them with resources, legitimacy, practices and engaging them in global networks. Next, we discuss two main forms of scaffolding iDFESOs engage in at the local ecosystem level.

Catalyzing the development of early-stage ES capacity
Some iDFESOs design highly novel selection mechanisms that catalyze local ES efforts at very early stages in the entrepreneurial process. One example is Gamma Award. Originated in the US, Gamma Award is an annual global competition for entrepreneurs that aim to address pressing social and environmental issues, such as climate change. In this sense, Gamma Award's competitions combine elements from international development with elements of ES. For example, each year it focuses on a specific global challenge, such as energy poverty, food security, or refugee crisis. The first stage of this contest is held at multiple universities across the world, for example, at universities in Rwanda. Local winners will take part in regional level competitions, whose winners participate in global contests in locations such as London and New York. Winners of the global contest receive a large financial prize and the best start-ups from the regional competition enroll in Gamma Award's accelerator programs conducted in the U.S. Importantly, beyond supporting selected entrepreneurial projects, the multi-level structure of Gamma Award's competitions has a profound local ecosystem building effect as it catalyzes nascent ES activities in multiple locations simultaneously. For example, the local Gamma Award's chapter in Kigali, Rwanda, not only organizes annual competitions but also helps participating universities get their student cohorts ready for the competition. In other words, these events have a mobilizing effect and they incentivize local universities to develop professional capacities in team-building and training local entrepreneurs. At the same time, Gamma Award's managers get other local actors involved to align trainings with local development needs. The local manager in Rwanda explains: "Basically what happens while organizing within the university is-first of all, it's the best of things-recruiting teams, organizing trainings or looking for people who can actually train the teams. [….] Later on […] you can be able to have the top teams from within the university compete against each other within the country and then be able to proceed on to what you call the global accelerator. But […] we need to make sure that the different players within the ecosystem [are involved] so that students can really come up with amazing things. So, that means we need to bring in the ministries, […] the government, and […] people from the private sector." The example of Gamma Award's competitions shows how iDFESOs' scaffolding at the local ecosystem level creates new demand for high growth and high impact potential ventures, for example by helping local universities in Rwanda participate in a global development effort and expand local ES capacity. Similarly, the iDFESO Epsilon Consulting works with local universities in Uganda to build capacity for teaching entrepreneurs to use design thinking to more effectively develop business models with social impact (see quote in Table 3). Thus, events organized by iDFESOs within local ecosystems can have a catalytic effect by helping local ESOs support impact-oriented new ventures.

Catalyzing network building of local ESOs
Prior research has shown that local ESOs not only support particular startups, but also engage in local ecosystem development (see Thompson et al., 2018), such as building communities of entrepreneurs, developing locally shared resources, such as mentor pools, and promoting ES mechanisms, such as tax breaks, to local governments (Dutt et al., 2016;Goswami et al., 2018). Similarly, iDFESOs have started supporting networking and ecosystem building of local ESOs in their respective ecosystems.
For example, in 2018, Alpha Center launched a cohort-based program to interconnect multiple local ESOs and equip selected ESOs with funding and technical expertise to better support new ventures and innovators locally. The first cohort of ESO partners included accelerators and incubators in Kenya, Uganda, India, and Brazil. Similar to new ventures, local ESOs are also constrained by the lack of local level resources in emerging economies. Thus, they also seek resources globally to finance their activities, and Alpha Center's program provided grants to selected participants.
Another benefit of this program for participants has been the increasing exposure to other participants in the local ecosystem. Oftentimes local ESOs operate in very isolated ways. By taking part in global support programs, representatives of local ESOs get invited to events and trainings along with other locally operating organizations. A founder of a Uganda-based ESO remembers how she became 'aware' for the first time of the larger ecosystem in which she was embedded: "Being in the program [made it] possible [to get] a whole lot of exposure to thinking beyond what I'm doing to seeing the larger picture, to seeing the ecosystem beyond Kampala. What about Rwanda? What about the region? What about the continent? […] And you realize the issue is actually the same." This example shows how local ESO-focused initiatives have been an important scaffolding mechanism across geographic levels. Effects include greater mutual awareness of local and regional ESOs as well as sharing and professionalization of norms and practices.
Another way iDFESOs support local network building is through participating in events that are organized by local ESOs. These include meet-ups and local pitch competitions that are organized by locally operating ESOs, for example in Kampala, Kigali and Nairobi. One example is the work of Kappa Network, a U.S.-headquartered global network of organizations that supports entrepreneurship in emerging markets. The network operates at the global and regional level. For example, the East African chapter of Kappa Network operates in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. While connecting local ESOs and entrepreneurs, these events often feature international experts who are recruited to evaluate local entrepreneurial ideas. These events have also promoted a diffusion of entrepreneurial practices supporting both commercial and impact-focused ventures in East Africa.
To summarize, one important form of scaffolding iDFESOs engage in is capacity and network building in local ecosystems in partnership with local ESOs. Aiming to create long-term impact, iDFESOs thereby act as system intermediary organizations (van Lente et al., 2003) which mobilize local ES organizations and engage them in preparing entrepreneurs for global-level competitions, support local network development through targeted projects, and bring expertise, financial resources, and legitimacy to local ES efforts by participating in local events and competitions.

Establishing transnational infrastructures
The third form of scaffolding is infrastructure-building at the transnational level which iDFESOs engage in to orchestrate DFES across borders. In particular, iDFESOs organize or sponsor global events and platforms that enable the exchange of knowledge and resources on impact-oriented business models across locations. Next, we discuss two types of transnational institutional infrastructures that iDFESOs create as part of their scaffolding efforts to support entrepreneurship in emerging economies.

Organizing and sponsoring global events
One type of transnational ES infrastructure are global events that interconnect iDFESOs, donors, entrepreneurs, and base-of-the-pyramid corporate initiatives. One well-known example are summits organized by Sankalp Forum, an initiative of the India-based social impact advisory Intellcap. By organizing a Global Summit and regional events, Sankalp Forum brings together various ecosystem actors to "convey global inclusive development dialogues with entrepreneurs, impact investors, corporates and governments." Kappa Network, a global ES network, organizes similar events, including global forums, conferences, and meetups. These events bring together actors from various fields, including international development, investment, and entrepreneurship.
From analyzing agendas of these global forums, we find that they feature thought leaders from the international development field, leading initiatives of DFES organizations, and successful entrepreneurs. These events also act as networking spaces. In addition, they catalyze the development and diffusion of novel DFES practices as they provide space for DFES managers to present their novel concepts, get feedback, and attract potential donors. For example, when developing novel DFES initiatives to support networking among ESOs in emerging economies, managers present concepts and proposals at events such as Kappa Network's Annual Conference to receive feedback from the international development community. As one iDFESO manager highlighted: "Presenting our concepts at [Kappa Network's] annual meeting was an opportunity for us to get a lot of feedback, both from the network members and from outside people… It also meant that we had this really nice portfolio of materials about it that we presented to donors later." Another example of global events are the Gamma Award annual competitions introduced earlier that have helped entrepreneurs connect with funders. The organizers of Gamma Award competitions are very aware of how these events help structure the interconnectivity between DFES initiatives, which are often located in developed economies, with entrepreneurs from emerging economies, and how they at the same time help compensate for local resource constraints: "How do we still stay connected on a global level but make sure that the context is local. So, we make sure we build an ecosystem given the resources that are available within the country with partners around that specific country." Other examples of international events that promote networking and knowledge exchange include (a) annual meetups, such as Alpha Center's conferences, that invite entrepreneurs from different emerging economies to connect and exchange experiences with implementing impactoriented business models; and (b) annual topical events, e.g. around "design", that attract ESOs from across emerging economies and that are used by iDFESOs, such as Epsilon Consulting, to familiarize ESOs with impact-oriented business models (see quotes in Table 3).

Creating digital sharing platforms
Another form of scaffolding at the transnational level are digital sharing platforms which are set up for both entrepreneurs and local ESOs interested in receiving information about new programs and other resources. For example, local ESOs are interested in receiving detailed information about new ventures and their progress from reliable sources. Entrepreneurs, in turn, are interested in funding opportunities, events and various support services beyond their local ecosystem.
One example is Omega Platform, an online platform designed to provide up-to-date information about new programs and funding opportunities to entrepreneurs in emerging economies. In particular, it collects information from so-called 'data partners', including major foundations, venture philanthropies, bilateral agencies, multilateral agencies, and many more. This information becomes available for free in a structured format to entrepreneurs in emerging economies. The platform has information on more than 600 funders and programs that in total provided more than 500 million U.S. Dollars of funding to more than 10,000 innovators operating in emerging economies.
Another example of an information exchange platform is the newsletter of Kappa Network. As introduced above, Kappa Network is a global ES network with more than 280 members in 150 countries. It engages in organizing various events across geographies and supports its members with research and networking. One of these activities is an informational monthly newsletter. This newsletter features news from Kappa Network's members, promotes global and local events, and also advertises the launch of new programs. In this capacity, Kappa Network acts as a key information broker, both for new ventures and ESOs, interconnecting these organizations on a permanent basis.
To summarize, iDFESOs also engage in scaffolding at the transnational level, in particular through global events and platforms that interconnect actors participating in development-focused ES. These infrastructure elements enable knowledge sharing and networking for globally dispersed actors and help build trust and legitimacy of DFES.

Discussion: scaffolding for development-focused entrepreneurship support
The main goal of this article has been to uncover key features and drivers of development-focused entrepreneurship support (DFES) as well as important ways in which international DFES organizations (iDFESOs) develop infrastructures and environments in which DFES can be provided. Findings have important implications for research on entrepreneurship support (ES) in emerging economy contexts as well as for our understanding of the growing intersection of ES and international development.
First, we identified key features and drivers of DFES as compared to conventional ES in advanced economy contexts. Table 4 provides a summary of key dimensions to inspire future research. In a nutshell, unlike conventional ES, DFES focuses on ES with an impact or development agenda targeting entrepreneurs operating in developing countries. One key insight from our literature review is that DFES is the result of three dynamics: the lack of effective local ES in developing regions (Devine and Kiggundu, 2016), the increasing social impact orientation of ES worldwide (Lall et al., 2020;Nicolopoulou, 2014;Naudé, 2011), and the increasing ES orientation in international development and foreign aid (Ebrahim and Rangan, 2014;Pandey et al., 2017;Chandra, 2018). As a consequence, we have argued that DFES needs to be understood as part of international development aid chains (Watkins et al., 2012), within which DFES is seen as a vehicle to promote new solutions to social, economic and environmental issues in developing countries (Chandra, 2018).
In this context, international DFES organizations (iDFESOs) play a central intermediary role. Essentially, iDFESOs, through their support activities, embed local and international entrepreneurs within international development aid chains, by connecting them to international donors and local beneficiaries (see Fig. 3). This is because iDFESOs help entrepreneurs mobilize aid funding to support their new ventures, and help them realize social impact opportunities and of ways to address the needs of local beneficiaries. Specifically, on the one hand, they develop support infrastructures at multiple levels that help connect local entrepreneurial opportunities to global development agendas. As a result, entrepreneurial opportunities are framed as development opportunities, while, at the same time, shaping the way development goals are being implemented. On the other hand, iDFESOs set up various partnerships and programs to help international donors allocate funding effectively to entrepreneurial initiatives that can positively impact local communities and disadvantaged groups. Fig. 3 displays these two important interlinked dynamics. In addition, expanding on Fig. 1, Fig. 3 specifies the ways in which iDFESOs build infrastructures that make the provision of DFES possible and that help embed entrepreneurs in international development aid chains. Next, we discuss these infrastructures and the roles of iDFESOs in building them in more detail.
In general, we find that iDFESOs engage in different, yet complementary forms of scaffolding at multiple levels to promote DFES (see Fig. 3). iDFESOs are thereby guided by a development support logic that emphasizes partnerships and multi-level capacity-building to address social and environmental issues in developing countries (see e.g. Sen, 1999). Scaffolding has been understood as the building of flexible infrastructures assisting processes of collective learning and systemic change (Mair et al., 2016;Orlikowski, 2006;Casasnovas and Ferraro, 2022;Gehman et al., 2022). In the context of DFES, scaffolding addresses two dimensions of systemic change. On the one hand, it is aimed at setting up infrastructures that can promote solutions to social and environmental problems in local contexts. On the other hand, it is designed to promote a shift from regular, commercially oriented ES to more impact-oriented ES. However, unlike locally focused scaffolding efforts that have been studied in other contexts of development (e.g. Mair et al., 2016), and in contexts of ES (Goswami et al., 2018), scaffolding in the context of DFES happens at multiple, interconnected levels.
The first form and level of scaffolding we focused on is related to iDFESOs setting up individual resource channels for entrepreneurs in line with development agendas of global funders. In particular, iDFESOs, such as Alpha Center and Beta Solution, run cohort-based acceleration programs for selected entrepreneurs, partly through local partners, to support technology development and commercialization and to integrate broader social impact aspects in their business models. Our findings show that, in addition to supporting their venture participants, such programs may also lead selected entrepreneurs to become impact ambassadors and mentors of other entrepreneurs.
From a scaffolding perspective, individual resource channels establish linkages between donors and entrepreneurs. These resource channels differ substantially from both regular ES and local DFES. In regular ES, most accelerator programs (e.g. Pauwels et al., 2016;Cohen et al., 2019b) and corporate support programs (e.g. Shankar and Shepherd, 2019) are based on equity funding. By contrast, iDFESOs offer grants, thereby "delegating" the implementation of development goals to entrepreneurs. Thereby, entrepreneurs are turned into agents of development and ambassadors of social change in the communities they operate in. In addition, unlike local DFES providers, which typically offer only limited funding and support, iDFESOs not only provide funding, but also extensive knowledge and access to networks. They also utilize their affiliation with well-known universities and major foundations as a symbolic resource to elevate the external status of entrepreneurs in emerging economies. As a result, individual resource channels link ES to impact goals, thus shaping new business models. We invite future research to examine in greater detail how business models and entrepreneurs are affected over time by DFES funding.
The second form of scaffolding iDFESOs engage in is building local capacity for supporting impact-oriented entrepreneurship through dedicated events and networks. iDFESOs mobilize local ES organizations, including universities, to engage them in preparing entrepreneurs for various impact-oriented competitions, and they engage in local network development through targeted projects. In doing so, they bring development expertise, financial resources, and legitimacy to local ES efforts.
By engaging in capacity building of local ES organizations and local ES networks, iDFESOs go well beyond the typical forms of infrastructure development done by regular ES organizations. For example, Goswami et al. (2018) show how ES providers promote networking among entrepreneurs benefitting not only single entrepreneurs but also the ecosystem within which they operate. While this form of ES does operate at the level of entrepreneurs and the ecosystem at the same time (see also Spigel, 2017), it is primarily what Dutt et al. (2016) call a form of "closed-system intermediation" since it benefits primarily entrepreneurs. By comparison, iDFESOs promote local events and networks whose reach and impact go beyond entrepreneurs as immediate target audiences. For example, by facilitating competitions around innovations for local environmental issues, iDFESOs build a support capacity benefiting entrepreneurs as well as local communities. This is what Dutt et al. (2016) call "open-system intermediation", as it "benefits […] parties beyond a well-identified set of participating actors" (Dutt et al., 2016: p. 819). When engaging in capacity building, iDFESOs thus act as systemic intermediary organizations (van Lente et al., 2003). iDFESOs' thereby extend the capacity of local ES organizations and ecosystems not just in terms of adding resources and networks, but by establishing linkages to and between local communities across locations.
The third form of scaffolding iDFESOs engage in is establishing transnational support infrastructures, in particular global events and digital platforms, to orchestrate DFES across borders. In particular, these infrastructures enable knowledge sharing and networking for globally dispersed actors. They also help build trust and legitimacy across the participants (platforms), and enable the exchange of practices and knowledge (events).
This form of scaffolding goes well beyond what has been studied in the context of local development initiatives (Mair et al., 2016) and local entrepreneurial ecosystems (Spigel, 2017;Goswami et al., 2018). One central mandate of iDFESOs is to embed ES in development aid chains across the world, not only to diffuse entrepreneurship-led bottom-up innovation across the Global South, but to facilitate learning across Fig. 3. How iDFESOs support entrepreneurs and embed them in global aid chains. locations and to make global development agendas applicable to diverse local socio-economic conditions. Whereas in the context of regular ES, local ESOs often compete with one another within and across locations, which creates barriers to learning, the main interest of iDFESOs is to foster collaboration between DFES providers across locations to support entrepreneurs sharing the same impact agenda. Towards this end, iDFESOs recognize capacity building opportunities at the transnational level, and purposefully develop infrastructures that ensure stability of DFES resource flows and also catalyze the evolution of impact-oriented ES across geographies. Importantly, these transnational events and platforms do not operate in isolation but are interconnected with local infrastructures. One example is Gamma Award's annual competitions that are carried out at multiple geographical levelsfrom local to regional to global. This allows participants to develop solutions and business models that are sufficiently embedded in local contexts, while also addressing broader goals.

Broader implications
This study has important broader implications for our understanding of (i) entrepreneurship support (ES) in the context of emerging economies, and (ii) the growing linkage between ES and development aid, and the role of intermediaries. This study also has important policy implications and it raises critical questions about the growing influence of new intermediaries and the resource dependencies they manage and create for various actors in the Global South.
First, our study helps address the demand-supply dilemma of ES in emerging economies. Specifically, this study elaborates how development-focused entrepreneurship support (DFES) can enable entrepreneurs in these contexts to access critical resources and support despite being under severe resource constraints in their local ecosystems (Harima et al., 2020;Biru et al., 2020). We thus answer the call for more research on ES in the context of poverty (Sutter et al., 2019). We showed how in particular through the work of international DFES organizations (iDFESOs), support infrastructures, or "scaffolds", are put in place at multiple levelsindividual, local, and transnationalto complement the support capacity of local entrepreneurial ecosystems (LEEs) in emerging economies.
However, these support infrastructures are not simply extensions of ES and LEEs in developing country contexts. Rather, we have argued that their availability comes with a shift in focus from regular, commercial ES to ES with social and environmental impact, guided by the agenda of sustainable development goals and development policies. In so far, the set-up of DFES infrastructures resembles other forms of "scaffolding" in development, since it is designed to help solve complex socio-economic and environmental issues through systemic change (Mair et al., 2016;Gehman et al., 2022;Sutter et al., 2017). More specifically, in the case of DFES, change efforts center around infusing an impact logic into new ventures and their business models in developing countries. Even though our study did not focus on the actual process of business model transformation, we encourage future research to look at these effects of DFES infrastructure development in more detail.
In this respect, our study also informs growing scholarly interest in transnational linkages of LEEs (Biru et al., 2020). Prior studies have shown that the effectiveness of local ecosystems often depends on transnational linkages (see also Bathelt et al., 2004). One example are multi-local venture capital firms specializing in supporting India-based entrepreneurs targeting US markets (Bresnahan et al., 2001). In the case of DFES, however, transnational linkages are established to mobilize resource flows from organizations, such as foundations and development agencies, which are not typically engaged in ES. This suggests that in particular LEEs in emerging economies are increasingly connected with various support organizations both within and outside the field of ES. Future studies need to better understand how these various transnational linkages affect how LEEs operate.
Second, our study addresses the growing linkage between ES and development aid. Prior studies have acknowledged that ES programs increasingly adopt an impact agenda (Lall et al., 2020) and that development programs increasingly adopt ES to stimulate bottom-up innovation processes in contexts of poverty (Yunus et al., 2010;Jue, 2009;Chandra, 2018). Our study builds on that by showing how these two trends have led to the growing embeddedness of ES and entrepreneurs in international development aid chains. We thereby focus in particular on the role of iDFESOs in promoting this embeddedness and thus the expansion of aid chains. Our findings help better understand how the incorporation of new public and private actors in development aid chains actually works. Prior studies on "aid chains" (Watkins et al., 2012) and changing transnational networks of actors around the implementation of development programs (Viterna and Robertson, 2015) have focused primarily on the formation of different contracts, alliances, and partnerships between globally and locally operating actors (see also Abbott et al., 2017). Our study goes beyond that by focusing much more on the specific organizational infrastructures, including events, platforms and programs, that are put in place to build new connections between global donors, intermediaries, entrepreneurs and local beneficiaries. We further show that these infrastructures are interlinked at multiple levels involving multiple support organizations, and that some of these infrastructures are more temporary (e.g. events and programs), while others seem more permanent (e.g. platforms). These findings invite more fine-grained research on the growing dynamics and complexity of "aid chains" as development programs expand into new domains.
One potential avenue for future research on the intersection of ES and development aid is to study DFES as an interstitial field (Furnari, 2014;Zietsma et al., 2017) that may establish its own norms and practices while connecting two different field contexts, such as ES and development. Even though this goes beyond the scope of this paper, one could study the various DFES infrastructuresprograms, events, and platformsas building blocks of this field. According to Furnari (2014), interstitial spaces provide opportunities for experimentation and the development of new field practices. In our context, we particularly focused on experimentation with crafting fundable business models with development impact. Future studies need to examine these processes in greater detail, including the tensions that may arise when different institutional logics, such as venture growth and development impact, collide rather than complement each other.
In addition, with the growing importance of interstitial spaces and fields like DFES, the role of intermediaries may become increasingly important as catalysts (see in general Furnari, 2014). In this study, we focused in particular on how iDFESOsas catalystsset up new infrastructures to establish resource channels and to promote new sustainable and social impact-oriented business models. However, we need to better understand their organizational missions and interests as well as their relational positioning driving their actions. Numerous sociological studies on actors in intermediary roles suggest that various institutional, organizational and relational factors influence how they perform their intermediary roles (Burt, 1992;Obstfeld, 2005;Lingo and O'Mahony, 2010). In other words, iDFESOs do not simply "serve" as intermediaries but may pursue their own agenda which may or may not be obvious to partnering organizations. This complication has already been noted in the international development literature (Abbott et al., 2017;Watkins et al., 2012), yet our understanding of its implication in practice is still limited. Future studies therefore may need to examine how different iDFESOs act differently as intermediaries and what is driving those differences.
This also has more fundamental implications for our understanding of the relationships between the so-called Global North and Global South. Especially since the 1990s, new forms of resource dependencies have emerged between regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and actors in the Global North. This is not least because of new forms and interpretations of development aid, like the ones favored by new donor countries such as China. DFES can be similarly understood as a new form of development aid that provides new resource channels for beneficiaries, while also potentially creating new forms of resource dependencies and related power dynamics.
From a critical perspective, the growing power of iDFESOs and DFES sponsors is concerning, since DFES seems to increasingly complement or even replace more conventional aid. For example, major foundations and venture philanthropies are known for being guided by "technology optimism" (Jue, 2009) in the way they approach development problems. Tangible smart-tech solutions to healthcare and energy problems are favored over "soft measures" addressing deeply entrenched problems of poverty and inequality (Abdelnour and Saeed, 2014). This may overly privilege tech entrepreneurs who typically share the notion that new technology has transformative potential, which also affects how they perceive the value of their products (Dushnitsky, 2010).
Another issue related to the involvement of these intermediaries is their adoption of certain calculative practices, such as impact assessments, that co-determine how problems are perceived and how solutions are measured (Hayes et al., 2018). The proliferation of formal assessment instruments, which is stimulated by professional intermediaries, is problematic not only because less quantifiable elements are hidden from view, but because it favors those entrepreneurs whose education and training enables them to "sell" their solutions as impactful. For example, in the case of the Energy founder we referred to in this study, her higher education experience in Europe prior to starting her business in Uganda helped her develop the communication skills needed to convey the importance of her business to Alpha Center. Other, more locally embedded, entrepreneurs, who lack such education, may have lower chances to become visible to iDFESOs' programs, even if the development impact of their business is significant. We need more insights into how the growth of DFES affects entrepreneurial narratives and storytelling (Zott and Huy, 2007;Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001), while potentially leading to new divides between entrepreneurs having vs not having respective skills.
In addition, future studies need to examine to what extent the rise of international DFES may lead to the crowding out of local ES providers and, at the same time, impose an impact agenda that is not well-aligned with local conditions. Studies by Zheng (2018, 2021) suggest that local tech hubs in sub-Saharan Africa often "fail" to promote scalable solutions, while being very effective in community-building, thus deviating from the mission of tech hubs in the Global North. In the same vein, it could be asked whether certain DFES impact methodologies, imposed by iDFESOs, prevent more locally embedded forms of "impactful entrepreneurship" from emerging, only because they are less visible or not in line with global development agendas.
Our study also has some empirical limitations which need to be addressed in future research. First, since DFES is still a very young phenomenon, its longer-term future as a trend is uncertain. To what extent is ES simply a hype in development discourse (Logue and Grimes, 2022), and how effective is ES as an instrument of development? Relatedly, since the long-term impact of DFES may be hard to measure (see also Ebrahim and Rangan, 2014;Wry and Haugh, 2018), this could lead to a shift towards less complex support instruments. Second, this study excluded a very important context of entrepreneurial activity in developing countriesthe informal economy (Devine and Kiggundu, 2016;Sutter et al., 2017) -which, for various reasons, has been hard to address by DFES measures. Third, our data focused on iDFESOs, whereas more research is needed to better understand for example the role of global donors, but also local partner organizations, in this field.
Finally, our findings have important practice implications. Especially in the context of developing countries, entrepreneurs seeking resources beyond their local ecosystem will increasingly have the opportunity to participate in programs and events organized by iDFESOs. However, this may require a new way of thinking about business models and opportunities, and a growing need to adopt a certain language that appeals to global funders. Likewise, ES practitioners need to be mindful of the growing role of iDFESOs in providing new resource channels for entrepreneurs. Collaborating with iDFESOs can be a way to benefit from resources, including funding and technical expertise. At the same time, support practices will be influenced by standards and frameworks outside of the local context, which local ESOs will need to adopt in order to be a qualified partner.
In conclusion, this study has taken a first step towards understanding DFES more systematically as a major trend linking entrepreneurship support with development aid, and the role of iDFESOs as intermediaries in establishing DFES infrastructures in support of entrepreneurs in developing countries. Our findings have important implications not only for research on entrepreneurship and development, but also for entrepreneurs and ES practitioners.

CRediT authorship contribution statement
This work is co-authored by myself, Stephan Manning (first and corresponding author), and Stanislav Vavilov. All aspects of this studytheoretical framing, data collection, data analysis and theorizingwere done collaboratively.

Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability
The data that has been used is confidential.