lead to

CIDE DICTIONARY

lead to, v. t. 

•  Same as cause; as, the roaring stock market led to an increase in the purchase of big-ticket items during the 1996 Christmas season.  [PJC]
•  to be a contributory cause of; as, IBM's inattention to the needs of individual users led to the demise of OS/2 as a viable alternative to Windows 95.  [WordNet 1.5]

THESAURUS

lead to

advance, affect, assume, bring, call for, carry to, come to, comprise, conduce to, conduct to, contain, contribute to, decide, determine, direct to, entail, extend to, forward, get to, go to, implicate, imply, influence, involve, point out to, point the way, presume, presuppose, put right, reach to, redound to, require, run to, set right, set straight, show, show the way, steer, stretch away to, stretch to, subserve, subsume, take, take in, turn the scale