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Annual Reflections
Annual Reflection 2017
In this year’s Annual Reflection, we deliberate on the significance and relevance of the meso level and meso policy options as a vehicle and lever for stimulating economic activities and strengthening enterprises at the micro level. We particularly focus our considerations on
the role and importance of meso organisations from both a theoretical and a practical, work-related perspective.
Annual Reflection 2014
There is an increasing understanding within the development community that the way development work has been done so far is too simplistic. The approaches that development practitioners apply to plan and map out required change, such as in the form of impact chains or other planning instruments, and to monitor and evaluate what has happened during the life of a project, are oversimplified and do not sufficiently reflect reality. The world is not linear; it is more complex than that. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to plan for every eventuality and therefore we need to design programmes in a more flexible way while still satisfying funders that our programmes are not wasting resources. Hence, systems thinking and complexity need to be more strongly integrated into
our work, our themes, our tools and methods.
Annual Reflection 2013
After a decade of operation as a multi-national micro-enterprise, Mesopartner is proud to announce the celebration of its 10th anniversary. Having started as the “PACA guys” 10 years ago, we have widely extended our topical focus, our geographical outreach, our methodological approaches and, of course, our network of associates, collaborators, clients and service providers. During this period the firm saw three new partners joining and one partner leaving in a very tragic way.
Annual Reflection 2011
In 2011 Mesopartner introduced some novelties in and around the company, became involved in the reactivation of previous work areas, intensified current activities and constantly deepened the expertise and learning in topics that the partners are involved in. To commemorate our late partner and co-founder Dr Jörg Meyer-Stamer and continue his academic work, we founded and launched the Dr Jörg Meyer-Stamer Scholarship, which supports advanced students and young researchers in preparing their theses. One or two
scholarships are provided each year in close cooperation with an international network of scholars who recommend students and supervise their work (see http://www.jms-scholarship.com). The first scholarship was granted in 2011 to a Latin-American lecturer and researcher working on local and regional economic development in Ecuador.
Annual Reflection 2010
Mesopartner used the year 2010 as a year of reflection and for reorientation after the passing away of the company’s co-founder, Dr Jörg
Meyer-Stamer in 2009. It has also been a time for consolidation of the main business activities. We concentrated on growing our strengths in certain topical areas and strengthening linkages with selected key clients and our associates.
Annual Reflection 2009
2009 was a year of sorrow and sadness for mesopartner, as we had to come to terms with the unexpected and untimely death of our friend, partner and co-founder Jörg Meyer- Stamer (30 October 1958 - 1 May 2009). His passing is not only a great loss for mesopartner, but for the whole community in the field of private sector development and local economic development. Inspired by Jörg, and in line with the great legacy he has left behind, our company mesopartner is determined to continue striving to make significant contributions to the area of economic development. Although it has been difficult to come to terms with his death, 2009 saw us delve deeper into those topics that we had started tackling together, topics such as innovation and technology management, to re-focus on our core competency, and on the development or further refinement of tools and methodologies.
Annual Reflection 2006
2006 was an exciting and positive year for mesopartner. One of the reasons was the positive experience with our own events. Not only was the Second International Summer Academy on Local Economic Development a success, so was the first Academia de Verano, a similar format that targeted Spanish-speaking LED practitioners from Latin America. Related to this is the fact that we are no longer seen as just “the PACA guys”. It is increasingly recognised that mesopartner offers a comprehensive set of tools designed to address challenges along the entire life cycle of territorial development initiatives. Customers have also noted that our approach is not to keep
our methods top secret, on the contrary, we document and disseminate them as much as possible.
Annual Reflection 2005
This Annual Report answers the question: “What does mesopartner do apart from PACA?” PACA (Participatory Appraisal of Competitive Advantage, a method to launch or re-focus territorial development initiatives) and RALIS (Rapid Appraisal of Local Innovation Systems) are our flagship products. But over the past two years we have developed a number of complementary methodologies that cover different phases and issues in territorial development processes. Moreover, we have observed that our methodologies lend themselves not only to application in local economic development but also to value chain initiatives at a regional level. You will find our experiences presented in this annual report.
Annual Reflection 2004
2004 was the first full year of operation for mesopartner, a company that was registered as a “Partnerschaftsgesellschaft” (partnership) under German law on 18 July 2003. The main features of 2004 were
strong demand for PACA, our leading product
the successful RALIS exercise with the textile and clothing industry in the Western Cape, South Africa
the development of complementary products – the Compass of Local Competitiveness for performance management in LED, and GENESIS, a rapid strategic planning approach
the strong demand for mesopartner training products around local and regional economic development
Assessing the Applicability of Private Sector Development Instruments in Agricultural Economic Development
The starting point of this GTZ paper is the observation that private sector development (PSD) and agricultural economic development (AED) have historically been two distinct approaches in development cooperation. Both looked at ways to promote productive development in developing countries.
Assessment of Malaysia's National Quality Infrastructure
The International Network on Quality Infrastructure, recently defined Quality Infrastructure (Ql) as: "the system comprising the organisations (public and private), policies, relevant legal and regulatory frameworks and practices required to support and improve the quality,…

Building Competitive Rural Locations
Rural communities in developing and transformation countries do not have to wait for somebody to save them. It is perfectly possible for them to boost the local economy using their own resources and ideas, and their own energy and creativity. The case studies in this volume explain how rural communities in Latin America, South Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and Asia have managed to create new opportunities and new income streams for their local economy. Local economic development can make a big difference when it is done in a pragmatic, business-like manner.
Business Climate Survey (BCS) Manual - A brief handbook to replicate the approach in Nepal
The Local and Provincial Economic Development (LPED) Project, initially planned for three years (June 2019 – May 2022), aimed to improve the framework conditions for economic development in eleven selected municipalities and three provinces in Nepal...
Business Membership Organisation Strategy Guidelines
The following guideline for designing a participatory approach to organisational strategy development of Business Membership Organisations (BMO) was first used to support the provincial chapters of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) in their restructuring process...
Calidena Toolbox
This toolbox is complementary to the Calidena Handbook 2.0 and differentiates between tools according to the phases of the process: ■ Preparatory tools ■ Workshop tools ■ Follow-up tools ■ Training tools Each tool is presented first in an overview table designed to provide a quick orientation, then followed by a more detailed description and a step-by-step guide to the pro- cedure.
Creating Prosperous Towns
How to launch and sustain local economic development in developing and transformation countries: This book introduces Local Economic Development (LED) as an organic process. It will help you to get an LED process going quickly. It will tell you how not to spend too much time and money on research. It will explain how to pull various stakeholders into a participatory process, and how to move into practical activities within a short period of time. There is a good chance that you will have some tangible and visible results after just a few months if you follow the approach suggested in this volume.
Eco-system services and territorial competitiveness
The traditional approach to competitiveness is based on labour or capital productivity (Porter, 1989). Given the over-exploitation of natural resources, today we can observe a changing basis of competitive advantage (Von Weizsäcker, De Larderel, Hargroves et al., 2014).
Inspirational practices from East German Regional Growth Pole (RGP) experiences
During 2018 and 2019 we were asked by different regional governance and private sector development projects in the Ukraine and Peru to identify key procedures and learnings from regional growth pole (RGP) strategies and institution-building processes in East Germany.
Just (Energy) Transition as an interdisciplinary transformation challenge: Learning from the German experience
Just (Energy) Transition as an interdisciplinary transformation challenge: Learning from the German experience The Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) commissioned Mesopartner PartG to summarize Germany’s Just Transition experience focusing on economic structural change and coal phase-out in selected regions of Germany.
Local Economic Development - An overview
As part of it’s support for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation’s (SDC) employment and income (e+i) network, Marcus Jenal of Mesopartner contributed to the development of an overview of current thinking and practice in Local Economic Development (LED).
Local and Regional Economic Development Dialogue Facilitation Guidelines
Public Private Cooperative Dialogue (PPCD) is a means to an end and seeks to make companies and cooperatives more competitive and sustainable while generating prosperity and ensuring inclusive processes that involve municipalities and other local communities (The Cluster Competitiveness Group, 2011)...
Making dynamism in the Systemic Competitiveness framework explicit
The Mesopartner approach is centred around the Systemic Competitiveness framework, characterised by its four spheres: meta, macro, meso and micro. As a canvas with four layers, it is a valuable method for identifying and categorising different types of stakeholders and features of an economic system.
Mapping the meso space that enables technological change, productivity improvement and innovation in the manufacturing sector
This paper focuses on meso organisations and policies that strengthen the technological capability of the country or industry to enable change, adaptation and economic resilience.

Milestones in a process of innovation, change and development
This anthology brings together a large variety of articles and comments by development scholars and practitioners from all over the world. The opening article and pivot is a reprint of an influential publication on systemic competitiveness. Based on this concept, the authors are taking a look back and also ahead at various topics related to territorial development, value chain and cluster promotion, innovation and change. The reader will get a deep insight in the academic work and professional personality of Dr. Jörg Meyer-Stamer. At the same time it’s a gift for his 50th birthday.
Dr. Jörg-Meyer Stamer is a pioneer in local economic development. As a researcher at the German Development Institute he co-authored the concept of systemic competitiveness and published numerous monographs and articles in academic journals. This book is an invitation to new debates in the development community.
Outcome Harvesting: a methodology to track change that is hard to measure
Development practitioners are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their work is relevant and that it contributes to sustainably addressing key challenges. There are many different ways to capture and report achievements.
Presencing in International Development
Cooperation
We live in a time of disruptive change. How to activate our capacity to lean into the emerging future may well be the most crucial leadership challenge of our time. How do you cultivate curiosity, compassion and courage in the face of prejudice, anger and fear?”
Promotion of Technology and Innovation in the Context of “Sustainable Economic Development”
Technical assistance has a tendency to address technology and innovation in an implicit way, as something that is elementary in creating or strengthening productive sectors and services in latecomer countries.
RACCA Flyer
Information Flyer on the methodology RACCA for rapid appraisals of climate-sensitive city initiatives. A Climate-sensitive approach for city development.
Rapid Market Assessment of Responsible Tourism in Vietnam 2017
In order to assess the feasibility of a possible future project ‘Responsible Tourism and Competitiveness in Vietnam’ envisaged by the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) for funding, the ILO has commissioned the preparation of a rapid market assessment (RMA) of…

Reducing Red Tape
Increasingly governments and international organisations are attempting to reduce bureaucracy and red tape. While many of these reforms are aimed at national laws and reducing the costs of compliance, not much guidance is available on how local stakeholders can identify and attempt to streamline red tape at a local level.
In this publication, Shawn Cunningham and Mattia Wegmann share their practical experience in reducing red tape at a local level. The manual is aimed at local economic development facilitators that are working on improving the cooperation between public and private stakeholders.
Regional Economic Potential Analysis
In 2006, mesopartner was commissioned by the European Union–Vietnam Private Sector Support Programme (EU-VPSSP) to develop a methodology for Regional Economic Potential Analysis and the supervision of its first application in the three provinces Hai Phong, Da Nang and Can Tho.…
Report on the first QI research workshop on 27 April 2023 at PTB in Berlin
Quality infrastructure as an emerging research field. The concept of quality infrastructure (QI) describes the system of metrology, standardization, accreditation, and conformity assessment, which contributes to the safety and quality of products and supports international…
Rethinking systemic change: economic evolution and institutions (Technical Paper)
In this work, we question the utility of the concept of systemic change in market systems development as it is currently used and suggest that we need a rethink. Systems continuously change and evolve, also without external development actors.
Returning to basic principles: Common denominators of the AR2018_10 - Mesopartner and the EU smart specialization approaches
Returning to basic principles: Common denominators of the Mesopartner and the EU smart specialization approaches Common denominators between the Mesopartner philosophy and the smart specialisation…
SDGs: Requirements for a more innovative and interdisciplinary promotion approach at the local level
In 2016, all 193 UN member states signed the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also named “Transformation Agenda 2030”. In contrast to its forerunner, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs not only focus on providing targets for developing countries but also…
Smartes Land: Promotion of interdisciplinary innovation approaches in rural areas in the European Union and beyond
‘Smartes Land’ is the heading under which Mesopartner started to reflect on how to promote innovation orientation in rural areas in the European Union (EU) through multidisciplinary innovation promotion approaches.
Territorial Development and the Great Transformation
In this interview (and videocast) we will be talking with Prof. Dr Dirk Messner about a question that has been keeping us busy for a while now: In our work, how can we promote a more sustainable and transformative way of territorial development, and what systemic perspectives.
The Chamber System of Nepal - Reflections and entry points for improvement
The national chambers of commerce and industry play a key role in representing and promoting private sector interests worldwide. They provide the necessary guidance and support to their members – the businesses that they represent, especially in structural change processes and transition.
The Impact of Quality Infrastructure on Global Value Chain participation
The Impact of Quality Infrastructure on Global Value Chain participation Sustainable development involves the strengthening of local firms. The continuous improvement in processes, products and functions to increase value added, that the literature and the policy practice have called firms’ upgrading, is absolutely essential for emerging economies to compete sustainably in global markets.
The Relevance of Quality Infrastructure to Promote Innovation Systems in Developing Countries
What is the potential and the relevance of Quality Infrastructure (QI) for innovations in developing countries? The working group “Promoting Innovation Systems”, funded by the International Technical Cooperation PTB, is investigating this question, aiming at integrating the…
The beauty of circular value chains
Both the value chain and the circular economy concept have their unique attractiveness. In the 2016 Annual Reflection we published the article From value chains to circular economic systems (Cunningham, Jenal & Harmes-Liedtke, 2016), where we argue that value chains often…
Other Publications

Mesopartner Working Paper 01
Participatory Appraisal of Competitive Advantage (PACA): Effectively Launching Local Economic Development Initiatives

Mesopartner Working Paper 02
Rapid Appraisal of Local Innovation Systems (RALIS): Assessing and Enhancing Innovation Networks. Rapid Appraisal of Local Innovation Systems (RALIS) is a methodology to conduct a rapid diagnosis of a locality, a value chain or a cluster with a special focus at technology and…

Mesopartner Working Paper 03
The Hexagon of Local Economic Development. Local economic development (LED) has been done in industrialised countries for decades.

Mesopartner Working Paper 04
Why is Local Economic Development so difficult, and what can we do to make it more effective? LED is increasingly being propagated by donor agencies and governments in developing countries.

Mesopartner Working Paper 05
The Hexagon of Local Economic Development and LED in South Africa

Mesopartner Working Paper 06
Regional Value Chain Initiatives: An Opportunity for the Application of the PACA- Approach

Mesopartner Working Paper 07
Governance and Territorial Development - Policy, Politics and Polity in Local Economic Development. There is an imbalance in the discussion around local economic development.

Mesopartner Working Paper 08
How to promote clusters

Mesopartner Working Paper 09
Benchmarking Territorial Competitiveness. Competitiveness is a concept and a reality that is rapidly spreading throughout the world.

Mesopartner Working Paper 10
Designing a Regional Development Agency: Options and Choices. The purpose of this paper is a practical one, we decided to go for an deductive approach, i.e. take proven concepts of economic and territorial development and outline the key choices, trade-offs and dilemmas involved.

Mesopartner Working Paper 11
The Local Business Environment and Local Economic Development: Comparing Approaches. Recent years have seen an increasing effort in developing and transformation countries to improve the business environment.

Mesopartner Working Paper 13
Addressing Red Tape at the Local Level: Options and Tools. Addressing red tape is an important building block of a local economic development (LED) initiative.

Mesopartner Working Paper 14
Systemic Competitiveness Revisited - Conclusions for Technical Assistance in Private Sector Development. This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 gives an overview of the evolution, key elements and underlying concepts of Systemic Competitiveness.

Mesopartner Working Paper 15
Revisiting the Hexagon of LED as a framework to strengthen LED initiatives. This document is targeted to trainers and facilitators that use the Hexagon of Local Economic Development (LED) to introduce LED concepts during training events.

Mesopartner Working Paper 16
Gaining systemic insight to strengthen economic development initiatives. Drawing on systems thinking and complexity theories to improve developmental impact.
Working Papers
Methodologies
Mesopartner has developed or co-developed a number of methods and tools that are widely used by territorial development practitioners.
Ecosystems have become very popular in the international development discourse in the last few years.
Calidena is a participatory methodology developed and implemented by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and Mesopartner to stimulate quality in value chains (VC) and aims to systematically and sustainably support the improvement of the national quality infrastructure (NQI) in developing and transformation countries.
In the article, 'Assessment of meso organisations for opportunities for improvement', we argue that there are four dimensions to improving meso organisations’ performance, along which each meso organisation can and should be assessed.
Mesopartner is trained and licensed to use the Sensemaker® ethnographic research tool developed by The Cynefin Company.
Participatory Appraisal of Competitive Advantage is a method that allows to conduct an action-oriented appraisal of a local economy in just two weeks.
Competitiveness is based on innovation. Any company that wants to thrive in a globalised economy has to constantly innovate. Innovation is shaped by the structure and the pattern of interaction in an innovation system.
The Reducing Red Tape methodology was developed in the context of the GIZ Local Economic Development project in South Africa.
Regional Economic Potential Analysis is a methodology that helps to identify economic sub-sectors with future competitiveness and growth potential in a subnational region.
The Compass, which is an evolution from the Balanced Scorecard approach, is a participatory method that combines strategising, action planning and monitoring.
The Hexagon is a framework to organise LED training events. It organises the key issues in territorial development around six triangles.