The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center (NEC) provides a range of entrepreneurial resources and programs to entrepreneurs at different stages of their business development and growth. Program assessment is one way NEC administrators gain insights into the effectiveness of current offerings, of participants overall, and of next steps/future needs for both the entrepreneurs they assist and for the NEC overall. In conversations with Penn State, the NEC has identified the need for a robust data infrastructure through which to harness and share lessons learned through current data and to conduct and review future assessments.

The NEC and the Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative at Penn State have defined opportunities for strategic infrastructure investment to sustain and grow the NEC’s ability to collect and query data that enable it to gain insights into current programming, identify and plan for future programming and resources, and create the ability to respond to stakeholder and NEC administrative requests as they arise.