The second shift concerned a shift from a policy story about the silver economy to a story about creating an attractive region for young workers. As a consequence, the Healthy Living initiative dropped from the agenda and was replaced by the Regional Branding initiative. The story of Healthy Living was reframed by supporters of Regional Branding as a story that mainly concerned the silver economy, a region for the sick and elderly. Instead, Regional Branding told the story about a bright economic future if a ‘dynamic and vibrant’ region could be provided for young workers. This shift was marked by the provincial elections and increasing political concern for the problem of depopulation, especially among young people.
Both Healthy Living and Regional Branding fitted well into the Provincial Executive’s existing policy programme and the Acceleration Agenda. Neither initiative questioned or challenged existing economic policies, but contributed to current debates and hot issues within provincial government. The stories both of the silver economy and of the knowledge economy fitted into and reproduced the ambition of the province to create an economically competitive region and leave behind the economic traumas of the past. The initiators of the Regional Branding initiative in particular seemed to easily adapt and connect to social trends that would dominate the new policy programme of the Provincial Executive, that is, the shrinking population and migration of young people to other regions. The Regional Branding initiative was not revolutionary, but reinforced the ideas that had already been developed.
The case narrative points to the importance of storytelling and (re)framing processes to explain shifts in agenda setting and why some initiatives were successful whereas others slowly faded. In the next sections, we further analyse the shifts in the agenda-setting processes described in the case narrative. First, we discuss the problems for effective storytelling in the New Markets process.
Second, we analyse the barriers that had to be overcome to get attention and response from targeted supporters, in this case the provincial government. Next, we discuss which efforts were taken to align with the provincial government as well as factors that can explain why initiatives were successful or not.
4.2 No clear ambitions, no attractive story
The case narrative told of the failure to construct a strong story about the contribution of the New Markets approach to sustainable area-oriented development. TransForum and Alterra were included in the process to ensure that the New Markets projects would somehow contribute to the management of landscape values as well as the rural economy. However, throughout the process, the subtle adjustment of the initial New Markets story to include the protection of landscape values and so-called KOMBI-stakeholders (knowledge,
94 Chapter 4
governments, interest groups – in this case nature and landscape organizations – and businesses)8 was never explicitly discussed, or even put on the agenda of the New Markets meetings.
We found that the difficulty of defining clear and shared ambitions was rooted in the focus on the organizational aspects of the process instead of on the substantive goals of the process. We concentrate on two arguments: (1) efforts were aimed mainly at keeping the entrepreneurs in the coalition, and (2) experts on the project team argued about who had the power to determine the process architecture.
Don’t lose the commitment of entrepreneurs!
Right at the beginning of the process, the members of the project team were afraid of losing the commitment of the entrepreneurs. They decided that their first priority was to invest energy in getting the entrepreneurs committed to the process. The commitment of the entrepreneurs was considered crucial because the innovative character of the project was attributed mainly to the role of entrepreneurs as initiators. The project was supposed to show that linking several private initiatives would be more productive to sustainable area development than a slow multi-stakeholder decision-making process coordinated by the provincial government. The entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm and capacity to act was thought to provide a better solution to sustainable area development. The project managers could therefore not afford to lose the entrepreneurs’ involvement in the coalition.
Consequently, the strategy for the meetings was to find topics that would interest the entrepreneurs: identifying obstacles to the progress of the individual projects, constructing a ‘corporate identity’ for the region as a business-oriented approach to the qualities of the region, and building a business community and a public–private network organization to offer a framework in which cooperation between entrepreneurs and other stakeholders could be facilitated. To achieve this last objective, several organization models were presented and discussed during and between the meetings, but the common goals of such a network organization and business community were not discussed. The implicit aim of the project manager from Alterra was to construct a network organization around the issue of landscape management, but this was never put on the agenda. Instead, the emphasis was on the interests of the entrepreneurs, as emphasized in the minutes of one of the meetings (August 21, 2006) and concerns the mission statement for the New Market project.
8 The KOMBI concept (short for Kennisinstellingen, Overheid, Maatschappelijke organisaties, Burgers, Bedrijven, Boeren en Innovatie) refers to collaboration between knowledge institutions, governments, interest groups, businesses and farmers aimed at achieving innovation (e.g. Van Mansfeld et al., 2003).
4
Entrepreneurs come first! The economic interest has priority and other interests should tie in with this. 4-15
Despite the efforts of the project team, the entrepreneurs did not become more engaged in the process. One of the meetings was even cancelled because the majority of the entrepreneurs pulled out. The project managers noted that the entrepreneurs were frustrated about all the talking without action.
I cannot get a clear picture of the benefits to the entrepreneurs of the higher goal of preserving landscape qualities. The project team member from Alterra has developed models, but these confuse the entrepreneurs. (The entrepreneurs’
representative on the project team) 4-16
Paradoxically, the effect of this desire to keep the entrepreneurs committed and the resulting discussions on how to build a coalition was the withdrawal of the entrepreneurs from the coalition-building process. Interestingly, the entrepreneurs did attempt to cooperate with one another and with the provincial government in informal settings outside the official New Markets process. Some of these activities did lead to successful policy agenda setting, such as the Regional Branding initiative.
Two captains on the ship
The second reason for prioritizing organizational aspects on the New Markets agenda can be found in the conflicts within the project team about the process architecture. The New Markets project management included experts who represented two different schools of thought about the organization of innovation. The initiator of the New Markets process, who operated as an independent chairman in phase I, believed in selective mobilization of actors, following the principle that only actors that are really committed to the goal of the process and that can invest resources should be involved. New Markets had started out with that idea of involving only wealthy entrepreneurs and keeping the provincial government at a distance. However, the Alterra project members believed in building a network organization with broad representation from society, including researchers, experts, government officials and officers, interest groups, entrepreneurs, and citizens, arguing that this would generate broad support for the proposed ideas and facilitate creative solutions that combined all the different kinds of knowledge of the participants. Their goal was sustainable landscape management, but this was never explicitly discussed with the provincial government representative and the initiator of the New Markets process who chaired the meetings of phase I. The main concern of these latter persons was to develop the new product–market combinations and create spin-offs; so for them it was logical to concentrate attention on the entrepreneurs.
96 Chapter 4
The project team members and the phase I chairman invested considerable time and energy discussing and arguing these different approaches to deciding who should participate and who should not. The provincial representative and the chairman feared that Alterra’s approach would result in an agenda that would be too broad in scope and too complicated for the entrepreneurs, who wanted fast decisions and action. Initially, Alterra was given the task of organizing the meetings, but the very first meeting was cancelled by the provincial government representative on the project team because he doubted the effectiveness of the approach.
The process management is tricky and not clear at the moment. We want to steer, but we also want to allow a lot of room for manoeuvre. As long as the organizational aspects have not been decided, we have to take the lead role. We hired TransForum, but had to step in because their methods and instruments do not work here. We thought TransForum would play a supporting role to solving knowledge questions, but they took a leading role. We are not on the same wavelength. The experts focus too much on the instrumental aspects and take too little account of the culture of governing. We were not happy with that, and that is why we took back control. (Provincial government representative) 4-17
From this it is clear that the project team members disagreed not only about the process architecture, but also about who had the right to make decisions. In the midst of this power struggle, there was no discussion about commonly shared concerns or goals.
The lack of a clear ambition in the New Markets process was an obstacle for the construction of an appealing and inviting story. In contrast, the Healthy Living and Regional Branding initiatives that developed outside the control of the project managers were characterized by a very clear ambition and story about the future of the region.