The Inclusive Markets Development (IMD) approach recognizes that different interventions are required at different places and times in order to ensure that markets function more effectively for the poor. This may include entrepreneurship promotion, enterprise development and creation of supportive market infrastructure, enhancing market institutions, policies and legal frameworks. The defining factor, however, is that the IMD approach seeks to strengthen the whole market system where needed – enterprises, business relationships, market structures or the business environment.

IMD can also be adopted in other development realms, for example leveraging the private sector to address gaps in educational services, foster energy and environmental solutions or used as a strategy in crisis prevention and recovery situations. Thus the approach not only addresses poverty alleviation but typically several of the other Millennium Development Goals. Regardless of the context, in order to arrive at interventions that truly promote inclusion the approach promotes broad multi-stakeholder engagement throughout all stages of a project from planning through implementation to monitoring and evaluation.

This handbook provides a flexible programmatic approach to designing, implementing and overseeing IMD interventions. Using the IMD approach, competencies of the private and public sectors to develop interventions that contribute to making the markets more inclusive can be harnessed.