This document provides definitions for key terms related to market systems development and facilitation. It defines terms like blockages, crowding in, drivers of change, empowerment, exit strategy, extension, facilitation, hooks, leverage points, market actors, market chains, market maps, opportunities, participation, risks, and sustainability. The definitions focus on how these concepts relate to analyzing market systems and facilitating changes that benefit marginalized groups.

1. Glossary
Decoding the jargon

2. Blockages [or Bottlenecks]:
Sometimes also referred to as constraints. A
blockage is a situation or a process that hampers
the ability of the market actors to make the market
system work better (i.e. become more inclusive,
efficient and productive).
Ultimately it is these blockages, and the potential
opportunities for overcoming them, that become the focus
for getting marginalised actors out of poverty.

3. Crowding In:
The central process in – and purpose of –
facilitation through which interventions catalyse or
bring other players and functions into the market
system so that it works better for the poor.
Crowding-in can result in enhanced breadth (more
transactions in the core of a market), depth (supporting
functions) or reach (new areas or markets).
Definition taken from M4P Synthesis

4. Drivers [of change]:
Specific leaders in the organisations you are trying
to attract who will be inclined to join the process
and mobilise their own organisations, clients, peers,
providers, etc.
These are the individuals who should be engaged and
targeted to join the PMSD process.

5. Empowerment:
The process of building the minimum and most
basic skills and attitudes for market actors to
interact effectively and productively with others.
This kind of empowerment is called “empowerment for
engagement”. Other types of empowerment (e.g. technical,
agricultural or business training) should be provided by
public or private market actors, not by the facilitator

6. Exit Strategy:
The plans that facilitators should have to make their
eventual withdrawal from the intervention as
smooth and “painless” as possible.
Good facilitators design and implement their interventions
with an exit strategy in mind (“how will this action help me to
become irrelevant?”). In order to be sustainable,
improvements in the market system must not depend on the
on-going support of development NGOs.

7. Extension:
Agricultural extension describes the knowledge
and information services that government agencies
provide to farmers to increase their productivity
and efficiency.
It includes, but is not limited to, the transfer of knowledge
generated by agricultural research.
Adapted from http://www.nri.org/docs/d4857_agric_exten_web.pdf

8. Facilitation:
Strategies and activities to create conditions that
motivate and support public and private market
actors to drive change themselves beyond the
facilitator’s intervention.
Facilitators must avoid acting as market actors, but can
empower them and create spaces for them to interact more
effectively, expose them to new ideas and encourage
experimentation and learning: always with the goal of
promoting structural changes in the market system.

9. Facilitator:
An agent –usually acting on behalf of an NGO, who
guides the PMSD process.
A facilitator is external to a market system, but seeks to
bring about change within a market system, according to the
vision for change developed by the actors within it.

10. Hooks:
A set of incentives and justifications that motivate
market actors to get involved in the PMSD process.

11. Interest Forums:
Interest forums are groups of market actors
working together around common interests to
make significant changes to the way the market
system works.
The changes they focus on might be in the market chain, in
the structure of the supporting input and services or in the
enabling environment.

12. Intervention:
A defined package of temporary activities or
actions through which facilitators seek to motivate
change in a market system.
Usually in the form of a government or NGO led grant-based
project or programme.
Definition adapted from M4P Synthesis

13. Iterative Process:
A process where a particular procedure is repeated
with the aim of approaching a desired goal.
Each repetition of the procedure is called an ‘iteration’ and
the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for
the next iteration.

14. Lead Firms:
Strategic market actors who can help facilitators of
inclusive market development to bring about
sustainable change for marginalised people.
They are key influential actors, with a willingness to commit
finance, personnel or time towards creating positive change
within the market system. A lead firm’s influence can have
many sources, including size, distribution networks or
political contacts; the key is their ability to drive change.

15. Leverage Point:
A point within the system, whether a key actor,
policy or relationship, where a relatively small
amount of effort can be applied to create a
significant change in the market system.

16. Marginalised Actors:
Actors who form part of the system – play roles in it
and derive an income from it – but who face
disadvantages due to their lack of bargaining
power, knowledge, political influence, social status,
income, etc.

17. Market:
Formal or informal structure in which buyers
exchange goods, labour or services for cash or
other goods.
Defined by forces of supply and demand, rather than
geographical location.
Definition taken from VSO’s Secure Livelihoods Position Paper

18. Market Actor:
These are the people, organisations and groups
who play a role within a particular market system.
This includes producers, processors and wholesalers, service
providers such as transporters or input suppliers, and those
who create the policies and infrastructure that affect the
environment in which the product is sold.

19. Market Chain:
The channel through which a product moves,
passing through each actor who has legal ownership
over the good or service, from primary producers to
final consumers.
The market chain therefore includes farmers, processors,
traders, wholesalers and retailers. In a market map, these
represent the middle section of the map.

20. Market Map:
The framework that Practical Action uses to
visualise the relationships and linkages between all
of the different actors within a market system.
This includes the market chain actors, the service and input
providers and the forces and infrastructures in the business
(or enabling) environment.

21. Market Opportunity Group:
Small groups of producers who represent much
larger numbers of producers to explore new and
better market opportunities both via the Interest
Forums and with key individual actors.
MOGs also play a crucial role in reaching consensus with their
peers around decisions made with other market actors, and
mobilising them to take action on these.

22. Market System:
The dynamic combination of people, relationships,
functions and rules that determine how a particular
good or service is produced, accessed and
exchanged.
It can be thought of as comprising a network of market
actors, supported by various forms of infrastructure and
services, and interacting within the context of the institutions
or ‘rules’ that shape their business environment.

23. Opportunity (systemic):
A moment in time or a combination of favourable
circumstances that create an opening or leverage
point that market actors can use to achieve their
objectives, and that would result in the market
system becoming more inclusive, efficient and
productive than before.

24. Para-vet:
Animal-health workers who have had a basic
degree of training in animal welfare and health
issues, and who often act as the frontline service
providers in rural areas where access to
professional veterinarians is difficult or slow.
Common tasks include vaccinating livestock, curative
treatments and advice about agricultural techniques.

25. Participation:
The engagement between different market actors
(both public and private) to coordinate and
collaborate towards changing the market system.
In complex systems such as markets, no single actor can
determine an outcome, and the decisions and behaviours of
all actors affect how changes will manifest. We therefore need
to bring strategic players together to jointly assess the system
and implement strategies to improve it.

26. Participatory Market Mapping
Workshops :
Workshops designed to bring together key market
actors to contribute their perspectives and build a
broader, more precise view of their market system.
We have found that through this process of participatory
market mapping, market actors build trust and relationships
between them. In addition to building the understanding of
market actors by facilitating the sharing of knowledge, another
objective of the workshops is therefore to create the conditions
of trust that enable coordination and collaboration.

27. Participatory Market System
Development (PMSD):
Practical Action’s approach to promote inclusive
markets that reduce poverty on a large scale and
protect the environment.
PMSD is based upon the principles of participation, facilitation
and systems thinking. It creates appropriate conditions for
public and private market actors to work together to improve
markets that matter to the poor.

28. Risks (systemic):
Possible circumstances and events that may expose
the market actors to dangerous situations or that
may have negative consequences for the
inclusiveness, efficiency or productivity of the
market system.

29. Steering Question:
A question that guides participants towards a
particular response, outcome or objective, or
attempts to get them to think about something in a
particular way.

30. Sustainability:
The market capability to ensure that relevant,
differentiated goods and services continue to be
offered to and consumed by the poor beyond the
period of an intervention.
Readers should be aware that this is a highly debated term. It
is increasingly common to understand sustainability in terms
of learning capabilities, resilience and adaptability.
Definition adapted from M4P Synthesis

31. Systemic Change:
Change in the underlying causes of market system
performance.
Typically in the behaviour and relationships of market actors,
formal and informal rules and supporting services – that can
bring about more inclusive, efficient or productive
functioning of the market system.
Definition adapted from M4P Synthesis

32. Systems Thinking:
The principle of addressing the entire market
system rather than just focussing on one part of it.
We cannot understand how a system behaves by looking at
the individual people or parts; therefore in order to address
the root causes of a problem rather than just the symptoms,
we need to understand how the key actors are connected
and how their decisions influence one another.

33. Vision for change:
This is the improved state of affairs that
stakeholders would like to get to and contribute
towards.

34. References
M4P Synthesis:
http://www.m4phub.org/userfiles/resources/712011102713724-
A_Synthesis_of_the_Making_Markets_Work_for_the_Poor_(M4P)
_Approach.pdf
VSO’s Secure Livelihoods Position Paper:
http://www.vsointernational.org/Images/VSO_and_Secure_Livelih
oods_tcm76-21054.pdf

35. If you think that any terms are
missing from this glossary,
please leave a comment below,
and we’ll add them in as soon as
possible!