Minutes November 8th, 2005

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PERIPHERAL LOCALITIES AND INNOVATION POLICIES

MINUTES OF THE PLIP VIDEO CONFERENCE MEETING

November 8th, 2005

12:00 – approx. 15:30 Finnish time

Participants:

Seija Virkkala, Kristiina Niemi in Kokkola

Riikka Ikonen, Åsa Petterson, Erik Gloersen (for the first hour) in Stockholm

Åge Mariussen, Trond Einar Pedersen in Oslo

Elín Aradóttir, Hjalti Jóhannesson, Guðmundur Ævar Oddsson in Akureyri

Klaus Lindegaard, Monica Stoye in Esbjerg

The agenda of the meeting was mailed to participants beforehand and had four appendixes:

1. matching principles,
2. suggestion for matching of the good practises,
3. suggestion for guidelines for good practice analysis and
4. suggestion for an interview guide.

I ROUND: INTRODUCTION

Seija opened the meeting and welcomed the participants. She noted that the agenda has been mailed to everyone beforehand, and she also discussed the practicalities concerning the workshop. The Finnish team records the workshop and makes the minutes. Seija told about the objectives of the meeting. The focus is in the matching of the good practices and the objective is to find a solution and consensus in the matching so that we can begin the good practice analysis. We must also agree on the second meeting in order to gather the local reference groups.

The descriptions of the good practices have been mailed to everyone in week 44, and it is supposed that everyone has read them. Seija thanked the country teams for the good practice descriptions, which form a good data to analyse. 

Every country team presented themselves and summoned up their good practices. The Norwegian Glomfjord case and the Danish VIFU case could be developed in different directions and have different emphasis.

We had some discussion on the differences of the good practices. The good practices are different in size, some are small scale projects while others are big efforts. Different functional types like networks, projects, centres, events, entrepreneurships, technical institutes and development agencies can be found in the good practices.

II ROUND: SELECTING THE GOOD PRACTICES

Every country team presented their priorities for the good practices to be transferred to their own case study regions and also explained their preferences. Some presented clear priorities, while others had a pairwise approach.

Seija stated that there is a big variety of the good practices and that they are all good and match very well the criteria we have set up in the PLIP project.

III ROUND: MATCHING THE GOOD PRACTICES 

Seija told about the alternatives in matching principles (and their pros and cons), which she also discussed in the paper mailed to the research team Nov 7 (also appendix 1 in the agenda).

The first alternative is that every good practise will be transferred and matched with only one case. This might be too difficult because of the different priorities. Some countries would have to take a good practice which they haven’t prioritized.

The second alternative is to take into account the priorities, as the researches themselves know what is needed in their case study area. Every country should deliver at least one good practice and receive at least one good practice. The good practices (and the countries) don’t have to be pairs in receiving and delivering and some good practices will not be transferred at all. A negative side of this alternative is that some good practices might not be transferred at all. Also the work input and the travel costs might vary.

The third alternative (Klaus’ suggestion) is making the analysis in larger groups of good practices. Seija suggested that the four industrial cases could be analysed together and some of them transferred with each other.

Klaus explained his idea of the larger groups, “the travelling circus” and the pair wise thinking.

Seija presented her suggestion for matching the good practices (appendix 2 in the agenda) which is a combination of the three alternatives mentioned above. The suggestion takes into account the priorities of the research teams. There are pairs and also not pairs. Furthermore, the larger group approach is used, but only for the industrial cases. The industrial cases could be analysed together, but because of the travel budgets some choices will have to be made in the transfer. Researchers within the larger group must have a lot of interaction. Also the fact that Iceland can only receive good practices from one other country because of the budget is taken into account in the suggestion.

We had a discussion on the larger group approach. Larger group is more complex and might need more resources, also the time resource is limited. Furthermore the larger group approach is problematic for Iceland with lesser resources for travelling than the others. Also participation of local actors might be a problem in regard to time resources and schedules. On the other hand the larger group approach might make the work more coherent. The experiences of others would be in better use.

The conclusion of the discussion was that we are going to have two larger groups, one in manufacturing and the other one in tourism and food. Inside these two groups the transfer is taking place according to a matrix that will be agreed upon later on in this meeting. Matrix means the practical transferring, larger groups mean transferring the experiences in other ways. The analysis in the larger groups requires more interaction between the researches even if the transfer is only to some countries. Larger groups meetings will be combined with the research workshops.

We had a discussion on the suggestion for matching the good practices (the matrix, appendix 2 in the agenda). Some changes were made in the matrix concerning the transferring of the good practices. Whether tourism and food case from Lofoten is transferred to Denmark will be decided later on. We agreed on doing the transferring according to the matrix below.

IV ROUND: GUIDELINES FOR GOOD PRACTICE ANALYSIS

Seija recapped the ideas in her suggestions for guidelines for good practice analysis and for an interview guide (appendixes 3 and 4 in the agenda).

In the discussion the guidelines for good practice analysis were considered ok. The analysis is for the regional workshops so it must be done before the regional workshops. First of the regional workshops will take place in context with the next research workshop.

We had a discussion on the number of interviews and concluded that 4 to 5 interviews is the minimum.

V ROUND: REGIONAL WORKSHOPS

Seija discussed the preparation for the regional workshops. As we have now decided the framework for the good practice analysis and also the deliverers and the receivers of the good practices, the next phase is to gather the local actors interested in the sector in question and inform them on the project and its ideas. This phase should begin soon.

The adequate number of local actors (local reference group) involved in the regional workshops is five or six persons depending also on the situation. The country teams may choose the way they inform the local actors, for example arrange a small seminar or communicate through e-mail. It is important that the local actors know what they are expected to do and also that they are oriented to the cases they will be involved in. The number of local reference groups in the case study areas can vary from one to three, because different sectors probably need different local reference groups. In many cases the good practice group and the reference group will presumably be interrelated, which also makes things easier.

Some questions were raised about the local actors and their role in the project. Seija clarified that the local actors’ role is in assessing how the good practice could be embedded, how the knowledge of the good practice could be used in their practices and policies, and how they could learn from the experience. The local reference groups can include also actors from national level, if they are important for the good practice.

The dates of the regional workshops should be decided between the researchers in both the delivering and receiving country, and regional reference groups. The regional workshops are to be arranged in February – April, 2006.

VI ROUND: CLOSING

We discussed and agreed on the following dates:

• Reports for the comparative analysis to Seija not later than 13th December
• The next meeting, a videoconference, is January 10th 2006, at 1 pm Finnish time, the focus is on the comparative analysis
• The regional workshops in February – May, 2006, the dates must be decided between the researchers in the delivering and receiving countries and the local actors
• The second research workshop in week 10, 2006, in Finland, the focus in preliminary findings
• The third research workshop in week 20, 2006, in Denmark

We agreed on that the research workshop in week 10 will have a length of at least one and a half day.

Comments were made on the videoconference. There was one technical problem; we had no picture from Denmark. Otherwise everyone was pleased with the meeting.

Seija thanked the participants and closed the meeting.