About Growing Inclusive Markets

• The Challenge
• Partnership
• Objectives
• Guiding Principles
• Research Tools
• Case Writers
• GIM Core Team
• GIM Trailer

The Challenge

What if, by finding ways to provide basic goods and services and offering better opportunities for poor people to put their minds and muscles to work, businesses could create wealth-AND do their part for human development?

About 2.6 billion people in the world living on less than $2 a day are trapped outside of the global economy, looking in. They lack access to most formal markets, and therefore to many opportunities. The reverse is also true: Their lack of resources discourages companies from offering the basic goods and services - things like consumer products, banking and telecommunications-that would empower the poor and improve their lives. What the poor don't lack ideas and energy. Too often, that power never gets a chance to go to work. Growing Inclusive Markets hopes to change that.

Partnership

In 2006, UNDP convened a diverse group of institutions with interest and expertise in the private sector's role in development; they became the Advisory Board for the Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative. Building on existing research, UNDP and its partners believe that more needs to be done to generate and assemble information and analyses of the markets of the poor, to better understand inclusive business models that create value for all and to identify innovative strategies for doing business with the poor.

Objectives

The initiative's broad aims are:

• Raising awareness by demonstrating how doing business with the poor can be good for poor people and good for business.
• Clarifying the ways that businesses, governments and civil society organizations can create value for all.
• Inspiring the private sector to action.

Guiding Principles

Five principles guide the initiative's work:

• Core business emphasis.The initiative promotes business models that create value by providing products and services to or sourcing from the poor, including the earned income strategies of nongovernmental organizations. It does not consider activities that are purely philanthropic or that cannot prove to be or become commercially sustainable, even though they have their own business rationales and are important for development.
• Developing world focus. The initiative is particularly interested in developing country businesses as central actors in providing goods, services and job opportunities to the poor. To sharpen this focus, the Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative commissioned 50 case studies of companies from researchers and academics in countries from Peru to Kenya to the Philippines. This bottom-up process, anchored in local knowledge, is producing an ever-growing network of development practitioners, policymakers, business people and civil society actors.
• Human development framework, guided by the Millennium Development Goals. Human development expands people's choices to lead lives that they value. The initiative applies a human development framework to doing business with the poor, concentrating on meeting basic needs and providing access to the goods, services and earning opportunities that foster economic empowerment. It shows how the private sector can contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
• Local agenda. The initiative is explicitly modeled on UNDP's success in localizing its Human Development Reports to shape national agendas and promote policy changes in countries around the world. UNDP's Egypt Country Office has already published a national report on 'Business Solutions to Human Development' and fostered a multi-stakeholder dialogue at the local level.
• Partnership and multi-stakeholder approach. The initiative has a multi-sector, networked approach and a commitment to involve many partners from different backgrounds — from the academic world to the development community to business associations — who are leaders in business and development thought. In this spirit, the information, analysis and tools generated by the initiative will all be published online, to be discussed and supplemented by interested parties.

Research Tools

The Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative has created a set of data, information and analytical products that will increase understanding of the markets of the poor, including existing opportunities and challenges.

• Market heat maps identify opportunities by depicting access to water, credit, electricity or telephone service. Offering a visual overview of the landscape — and a first look at possible markets — the maps are supported by information on the structure of those markets, such as the various kinds of providers.
• The strategy matrix is an analytical framework that helps to identify market constraints and think through strategies to address them. It links five broad constraints in the markets of the poor with five strategies that can yield solutions.
• The case studies help to find solutions by learning from the experiences of others and describing successful business models that include the poor.

GIM Core Team

Sahba Sobhani (Programme Manager)

Afke Bootsman (Programme Analyst)

Austine Gasnier (Programme Associate)