The corporate sector is a major driver of development, yet its role as a development actor remains consigned to the sidelines of the development debate.

This Background Note argues that, incomplete though our understanding is, we can define a ‘sweet spot’ that would allow the corporate sector to play a full, strategic and positive role in international development. This revolves around two components:

• creating a regulatory and legal framework that facilitates corporate investment and activity
• developing structures to harness corporations and corporate behaviour that provide the greatest development benefits and that marginalise the corporations and behaviour that damage development.

It identifies some of the elements that will help change the rhetoric about corporate engagement into operational reality.