Chris Jurgens is Director of Global Programs for Accenture Development Partnerships, a group within Accenture, the global consultancy, whose mission is to channel the company’s skills and capabilities to have an impact on solving global development challenges. Operating as a not-for-profit corporate social enterprise, Accenture Development Partnerships provides management and technology consulting services to development sector organizations on a reduced cost basis.
As part of USAID’s 50th Anniversary, the Agency is celebrating Public-Private Partnership Week October 17-21, 2011 to highlight the mutual benefit that development and business have in establishing public-private partnerships (PPP) and to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) program.
As USAID celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Global Development Alliances program, it is an opportune time not only to reflect on the successes and learnings of the past decade with respect to cross-sectoral partnerships for global development, but also to look forward and think about the appropriate role of partnerships in the decade ahead.
As an organization that works at the intersection of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, we at Accenture Development Partnerships are bullish on the potential for cross-sectoral partnerships to become a more pervasive and impactful instrument for achieving development outcomes in the years ahead. In our recent point of view on The Convergence Economy, we set out a future vision for development which foresees not only a blurring of the boundaries between the sectors, but a fundamental shift in traditional conceptions of ‘who does what’ when it comes to delivering development impact.
In this future vision, the role of business would be far more impactful than it is today, with the private sector embracing a broader definition of value. And in this new paradigm, we’d see an increasing number of hybrid business models and hybrid funding models which align commercial interest with development impact. These hybrid structures and partnership models, when properly implemented, can enable greater innovation in how we tackle development challenges; improve efficiency and better value for every development dollar spent; and enable greater scalability and sustainability.
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