FIELD Facilitation Brief 4: Interventions with Lead Firms

This document presents the results of the fourth “cycle” of discussions of the FIELD Facilitation working group. The objective of this working group (see Appendix A for a list of participating organizations) is to share experiences and identify best practices for facilitating value chain development projects – and more specifically how projects can best work with “lead firms” (LFs) to accomplish their goals.1 In an effort to structure the work, a series of six “discussion cycles” has been developed that are taking place over a one-year time period (see Appendix B for a list of these cycles). Each cycle takes place over a 2-3 month period and consists of preliminary tasks, working group discussions, and a synthesis of results.

This fourth cycle is titled “Interventions with Lead Firms.” It begins with a “typology” of common interventions that development organizations (DOs) undertake in collaboration with LFs in order to increase the competitiveness of these firms and the value chains they participate in, and to generate sustainable impact for the many MSME producers that the LFs buy from or sell to. Following a discussion of the typology, examples of “intervention briefs” (IBs) based on the actual experiences of working group member organizations are presented. Each IB contains a description of the initiative, an outline of the activities, potential cost-share opportunities, and a section detailing the lessons learned and challenges faced by DOs. While there are not IBs for each topic listed in the typology, the ones presented provide good examples of different strategies and methodologies that reflect the principles of working with Lead Firms described in WG Cycle 1.