Multi-stakeholder platforms or hubs can systematically bring together companies, government, international organisations and civil society, align interests and support innovative collaborative action to achieve both business and development goals. Platforms may focus on a range of issues which require multi-sectoral action, for example, on tackling specific social issues (such as nutrition, education or health), creating new markets, developing sustainable value chains, supporting more inclusive business or addressing natural resource constraints.
Such platforms form an essential part of the infrastructure required to scale up the use of collaboration with business to deliver the post-2015 development agenda.
In association with the UK’s Department for International Development and Sida, TPI’s Platforms for Partnership action research programme has developed a major new report on emerging good practice in platforms, which is informed by 40 relevant research papers, 9 original case studies and a knowledge-exchange workshop for those people running or development platforms.
While being academically well-grounded, it is a highly pragmatic report, based on the real, on-the-ground experiences of developing and running platforms. As such, it directly acknowledges and tackles the tension between what is theoretically desirable and what is practically feasible under normal, resource-constrained circumstances.