Can Business Development Services practitioners learn from theories of innovation and services marketing?

Business Development Services (BDS) programmes have become big business for international donors and NGOs. Focusing on small enterprises in developing countries, the current BDS approach assumes that the development of commercial markets is the key to success. Yet many of these programmes continue to have a limited impact. A review of modern theories of innovation and services marketing management suggests that this may be because current BDS support practice reflects a rather limited understanding of how new markets actually develop. Drawing on the insights that these theories offer, the authors suggest that BDS practice should develop a more evolutionary approach, recognising that service innovations develop through active, on-going interaction between suppliers and customers. The article concludes with practical policy guidelines and a discussion about tools that could help BDS to adopt this more successful approach.     

The public costs of private blessings: Fundamentals of the economic role of government

The main thrust of this overview is to demonstrate how the shift of government authority over time—from a defense of the realm against foreign intruders to an adjudication of conflicting citizen claims—has created a new set of problems and challenges for the modern state in search of development. It is argued that the power of the state expands as traditional forms of economic rivalries and class claims weaken, and as recourse to legal decision-making becomes widely accepted by all social and economic sectors. Government has proven better able to satisfy existing claims than at initiating new forms of social relations. Experiences in a variety of economic structures thus argue for a continued interplay of public and private, federal and personal claims. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08933. Among his major works on development theory and practice areThree Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification (Oxford University Press, 1965, 1972), andBeyond Empire and Revolution: Militarization and Modernization in the Third World (Oxford University Press, 1982). He was founding editor ofStudies in Comparative International Development.     

Living in a warmer world: Challenges for policy analysis and management

Human activities are causing a steady increase in the concentration of infrared absorbing trace gases in the atmosphere. The buildup of these gases is causing a global warming that will dramatically alter regional climate patterns. Increases in sea level, changes in the patterns of winds and ocean currents, alterations in the magnitude and distribution of rainfall which occur as a result of global warming will have major economic and ecological consequencws. The timing and severity of these impacts will be determined in large measure by policy choices made in the near future and implemented over the next several decasdes.