Ledcast

Ulrich Harmes-Liedtke interviews Vinicius Lages of SEBRAE, Brazil’s small business promotion organisation. He explains how an SME-oriented supplier development project with Petrobras evolved into a value chain project, how SEBRAE approaches the issue of certification of SMEs, and the link to territorial development. -- Apologies again for the poor sound quality, hopefully for the last time since Ulli recently purchased a new and much better recording device!

Frank Waeltring interviews LED practitioners from several South East European countries. They share some of their main learning processes.

Ulrich Harmes-Liedtke and Martin Doherty talk about the relevance of sanitary and phytosanitary standards in global value chains, their impact on producers, and possible responses by producers, including efforts to move into niche products or innovative, unusual products. -- We apologise for the poor sound quality of this recording.

Colin Mitchell explains a simple workshop format to engage with stakeholders at a very early stage of an LED process, asking them: What makes you mad? What makes you glad? What makes you sad?

Jorg Meyer-Stamer interviews Mark Lundy of the Agribusiness Group at the Center for Tropical Agriculture, www.ciat.cgiar.org. They talk about CIAT's "learning community" around value chain development, surprising experiences with powerful buyers, and what often goes wrong in value chain initiatives.

Shawn and Jorg explain how to use Michael Porter's Five Forces Concept as a tool in a quick workshop with local businesses from the same subsector.

Jorg Meyer-Stamer interviews Lizbeth Navas-Aleman, fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, about her research on the learning that takes place, or doesn't take place, as companies from developing countries are integrated into global value chains.

Hayder Al-Bagdadi, Atjeng Kadaryana and Christian Schoen discuss the achievements and learning processes in the Regional Economic Development Programme [gtz-RED] in Central Java, Indonesia.

With this show we start a new series in the LEDcast. We look at value chains: What are they? How are they relevant for local economic development? How can you promote them?

Jörg Meyer-Stamer interviews John Lawson, an LED specialist currently involved in a major EU-supported LED programme in South Africa's Limpopo province. John reports on his experience with initiating an LED process in a poor rural municipality called Fetagkomo.

Gerry Delaney, a South African LED consultant, explains the main features of the Business Retention and Expansion (BR&E) approach to LED.

In this episode, Jörg Meyer-Stamer and Colin Mitchell continue their conversation on how to prepare a workshop. What are the issues that you consider when you design the sequence of activities in a given workshop? How do you make sure that the limited time is used effectively, and what do you do to get a practical result out of a workshop?

In this episode, Jörg Meyer-Stamer and Colin Mitchell discuss one of the critical issues in the organisation of a workshop: How do you invite the right people? And how do you handle the management of expectations properly?

In this episode, we present a conversation that was recorded at mesopartner's Summer Academy on Local Economic Development. Jim Tanburn shares his views on the topic of "local enabling environment" -- what it is, and what can be done to promote it. Jim is an international consultant who specialises in private sector development. He also administrates the Donor Committee's website, www.businessenvironment.org.

From now on, we will run parallel series on concepts, tools, cases, and specific issues. This is the first episode under 'concepts'. It addresses the topic of 'clusters' -- what are they, and why are they such in an issue in the context of local economic development?  

With this episode we complete the first dozen. We take this as an occasion to reflect on our learning process, and to discuss some of the comments that we received from listeners.

Ulrich Harmes-Liedtke, mesopartner, interviews Martin Gasser of the ILO's International Training Center about the ILO's approach to LED. 

The three meanings of facilitation in LED are facilitating a learning experience, a workshop or meeting, and an LED process. We discuss what often goes wrong in facilitation, and what to do about it.

We discuss why LED needs to be conceptualised as a process. It is crucial to build credibility, trust, confidence and creativity. An LED process is a learning process. It is also, unfortunately for external donors, somewhat unpredictable.

Christian Schoen interviews Jonathan Mitchell about the relationship between the pro-poor tourism approach and local economic development.