Theory Practice Dialogue "Growing Inclusive Markets"

Context

For the first time in Germany, experts from business, development and academia gathered to discuss the potential business to alleviate poverty in developing countries. The event was also the first presentation of the UNDP Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative in Germany and the pre-launch of its first report.

The two-day dialogue aimed at generating a better, shared understanding of the opportunities and challenges of developing ways of doing business that benefit business and the poor

Programme

Christina Gradl presented the main findings of the first report of the UNDP Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative, "Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor". The report identifies the most common obstacles to doing business with the poor and highlights five strategies to successfully overcome them.

Gerd Trogemann of UNDP introduced the concept of 'human development' which promotes a multidimensional understanding of poverty. The concept is used in UNDP as well as in many other development organizations to guide poverty alleviation activities.

Daniel Kronen (Siemens AG), Michael Anthony, (Allianz SE), Bernd Wolff (Energiebau Solarstromsysteme GmbH), and Götz von Stumpfeldt (GTZ) provided insights on their business ventures that include the poor. They all showed that in order to build new markets, companies had to engage in unusual innovation processes and work with non-traditional partners. Prof.

Ingo Pies, Chair in Economic Ethics at MLU Halle-Wittenberg, argued that companies had to act as "corporate citizens" in order to be successful in the context of poverty. Building on historic examples, he showed that business models had to find ways to turn trade off situations into win-win situations by designing productive incentive systems.

Stimulated by these inputs, participants had lots of room for discussion in groups and in the plenary. These discussions resulted in concrete recommendations for all relevant actors on how to promote this new business-led approach to poverty alleviation. Participants could also benefit from new ideas for developing their own programmes further. But the main outcome may have been that a first step has been made toward the generation of a German expert network on business approaches to poverty alleviation.