Expanding Opportunity and Access: Approaches That Harness Market and Private Sector to Create Business Value and Development Impact

Abstract

A vibrant and diversified private sector is a desired outcome of development, a crucial driver of development and an increasingly important partner with other actors in achieving effective development outcomes. Domestic and foreign private enterprises of all sizes and industry sectors are playing a role in expanding opportunities and access for people in developing countries to lift themselves out of poverty. Pioneering corporations, entrepreneurs and financiers are delivering innovative new approaches and resources to support development goals while achieving their business objectives. They are leveraging their core competencies and value chains along with strategic philanthropy and public policy dialogue to include the poor as producers, employees and consumers, to spread more accountable and responsible business practices, and to drive more environmentally sustainable growth. They are developing new business models aimed at achieving competitive advantage alongside new collaborative models aimed at achieving systemic change. Over 250 examples of domestic and foreign enterprises reviewed for this study illustrate the potential of private investment that explicitly aims to realize development impact while also creating business value. To achieve this dual objective innovation is often required in products, services, technologies, business models and stakeholder engagement mechanisms at the level of individual firms. Systems-level innovation is also necessary to accelerate the pace of change and to achieve scale and sustained impact. This includes coordinated interventions along key value chains and the creation of development clusters in areas such as agriculture, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, energy, housing, education and financial services. It requires the use of new technology platforms and the creation of new types of financial instruments and intermediaries that harness a combination of public, private and philanthropic resources. And it calls for policy and institutional reforms on the part of both donor and developing country governments.