BDS market development guide.pdf - PACA

11
Approach
The Old: previously, approaches have supported
organizations—usually government-related—in
designing and delivering BDS with an implicit
assumption of continued subsidy and often
standardized BDS.
The New: above all, the BDS market
development paradigm demands a different
approach to intervention on the part of donors. It
is one built on four related ideas: 10
1. The starting point for intervention design
should be a rigorous understanding of BDS
markets; market-research tools can be a
valuable means of achieving this—that is,
where are we now? (Chapter Two)
2. Interventions need to develop a clear view of
how BDS markets will operate in a
sustainable manner by linking key market
functions with actors —that is, where do we
want to go? (Chapter Three)
3. In their design and implementation,
interventions need to observe, interpret, and
give more specific meaning to the BDS
principles of good practice—that is, how do
we get there? (Chapter Four)
4. Given a market development approach, we
need to determine what defines success in a
BDS intervention and what can and cannot be
usefully measured to improve or prove
success needs to be determined—that is, how
do we assess our performance? (Chapter
Five)
10 These issues form the basis of the remainder of this guide.
Box 1: What’s in a Name?
Ten years ago, BDS was an unknown
abbreviation in the development world. Its
birth and development in many ways
represent the underlying changes that have
taken place in development agencies’
thinking in this field.
First, donors talked about non-financial
services. The problem is that it described
what services weren’t rather than what they
were and—obviously—these services to a
rather unimportant, leftover second place
behind financial services. It was hardly a
name to inspire.
Second came BDS. This is an improvement,
but the reason for the inclusion of
“development” is unclear. Some donors try to
make a distinction between development
services and other services, but what this
means is far from clear. From a business
perspective—the consumer of services—
”development” is a meaningless term;
consumers purchase services that are useful,
and are unlikely to want services that do not,
in some way, contribute to the development
of their business. Businesses are much more
likely to define services with regard to the
benefits they gain from it. Once again, it
seems that development here means some
services are deemed by the supply-side
(donors, governments, etc.) to be good and
correspond to a public goods view of services
rather than private services in markets.
Third, BDS is where we are but business
services is where we are going. Faced with
the above arguments, it would be consistent
and logical now for agencies to drop
“development” and embrace terminology that
is consistent with market realities.
Do names matter? It depends. No, because
substance matters more than labels. Yes,
because inaccurate titles can prevent us from
confronting the full implications of the BDS
market development approach.
Chapter One—Why BDS Market Development?
Why It Is Important and What Is New about It