What's a Good Mentor Worth?

Can a good mentor influence the success or failure of a micro-entrepreneur? What if that mentor is 6,000 miles away? A new study by Chicago Booth professor Pradeep Chintagunta with support from the school’s Social Enterprise Initiative seeks to evaluate the impact of nonprofit Grow Movement’s coaching initiative which pairs Ugandan entrepreneurs with international business professionals for remote consulting sessions.

Chintagunta, along with Naufel Vilcassim and Stephen Anderson-Macdonald, will use a randomized control trial to evaluate the impact that Grow Movement’s long-distance mentoring program has on the economic and social outcomes of 1,500 businesses in Uganda. Further, the study will track the efficacy of the organization’s aim to build the skills and confidence of entrepreneurs, thereby improving the profitability of their businesses and ameliorating the quality of life of the entrepreneurs, their employees, their households, and their communities. Chintagunta and his colleagues seek to better understand and enhance the role that socially minded business professionals in developed countries can play in stimulating private enterprise growth in developing countries

Chintagunta is the Joseph T. and Bernice S. Lewis Distinguished Service Professor of Marketing at Chicago Booth. His research focuses on household purchase behavior, pharmaceutical markets, and technology products. Chintagunta is on the advisory editorial board of Marketing Science, and is the editor of Quantitative Marketing and Economics. He is the recipient of the Hillel J. Einhorn Award for Excellence in Teaching and has been named one of Booth’s top professors by BusinessWeek.

The Social Enterprise Initiative at Chicago Booth supports the aspirations of students and alumni to impact social issues and furthers research on how institutions help solve global problems.