We offer the following services

Our services are informed by many years of experience and various research engagements.

Advice

Mesopartner has assisted national and provincial governments, as well as donor organisations and international organisations, to develop and refine policies, in particular in the field of local and regional economic development. This has included advice on how to frame and implement cluster promotion, how to introduce and connect the topic of "innovation" with the wider field of private sector development, and how to strengthen innovation systems.

Mesopartner is also involved in efforts to re-conceptualise "industrial policy", a topic that has resurfaced in the development discussion in recent years.

Method Development

Over the years Mesopartner has built a reputation as a method developer with some widely applied instruments like PACA and Compass. Initially, Mesopartner developed these methods mainly for its own benefit. Over time it became apparent that our clients had a great need that we could meet by helping them to develop their own methods and instruments.

At the core of most development programmes is the need to develop systematic approaches to address certain issues or to implement certain activities. Very often solutions emerge in these programmes that are based on intuition and exploration rather than deductive thinking or a purposeful design process. We assist our clients to improve these methods by filling the gaps, and by creating frameworks that strengthen their own solutions. We have often assisted with the development of publications and capacity building material, and with the roll-out of capacity building.

In many other cases, we develop methods or instruments based on our own fieldwork experience. Because we travel between different locations and programmes, we benefit from being outsiders to most development processes, and thus in a good position to identify gaps that are not addressed by specific methods. Most of our recently-developed tools were created in cooperation with clients and published under the creative commons license.

Process Moderation

In the process of developing local and regional economies, it is often necessary for organisations or stakeholders to change their role and their activities to improve developmental activities. This could be as simple as adapting a few new projects or activities to support ongoing processes, or it may require fundamental changes in the way organisations function and what they focus on.

Mesopartner is able to provide process consulting services to these organisations to assist them to develop a new perspective (or strategy) on their developmental activities, assist them to develop the human capacities to undertake new activities, and assist the organisation to implement development activities. This may require the development of new policies, strategies, knowledge systems and operational plans.

In other cases the organisational development is much simpler and requires an organisation to incorporate some new instruments or concepts into its work plans, or approach its work in a slightly different way. We have realised that even in these cases, the adoption of new methods and concepts should be recognised as a change process that must be managed and supported from beginning to end.

Training and capacity building

It is our experience that teaching and training are important yet only a small part of effective capacity building. Our capacity-building events are focused on combining inputs of new material with generating practical experiences by applying the learned content directly to the students' own work. We organise study tours for people to see firsthand what others do and get inspired by these vivid experiences.

In addition to capacity building in the form of training courses, we put an additional focus on helping our customers to put continuous learning at the centre of their activities and implement effective knowledge management strategies. Starting with the existing knowledge of stakeholders and practitioners, we introduce new knowledge that strengthens and expands their knowledge.

Knowledge management includes four lines of activity:

Capturing knowledge and turning it into manuals and other documents, as well as creating robust procedures.
Re-combining existing explicit knowledge, for instance by introducing existing concepts from one discipline into a different field.
Creating structured learning experiences, where practitioners are introduced to new knowledge.
Stimulating ongoing reflection and interactive learning, for instance by running a Community of Practice.

Mesopartner uses all four lines of activity in its capacity building:

We capture our experience in manuals and other documents.
We conduct research and publish research-based books and papers.
We organise a variety of training courses and learning events.
We support the PACA Community of Practice, and we run international study tours.

We help our customers and other partners to adapt this approach to capacity building to their needs.

We have a strong preference for sharing knowledge, rather than protecting it. This includes building relationships with associates and supporting, coaching and mentoring them in their work. Most of our manuals are available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.