This is a CTP of initiative: Living Labs - Laurea (Finland)
This critical turning point (CTP6) elaborates on the relation between professional actors, mainly entrepreneurs and civil servants in the Sharing and Caring project of the Laurea Living lab. It discusses the challenges that became apparent and describes the consequences for the project itself. Since the Sharing and Caring project aimed to establish a network and to stimulate co-production it was very important that all actors showed a willingness and interest to collaborate. Even if this seemed realistic in the phase of the project design, in reality it proofed hard to realise it. And eventually the project did not achieve to establish the co-productive ecosystem that it intended to. More concretely it also implied that the professional actors could not agree on the division of tasks and responsibilities for the community centre, a concrete sub-project within the larger Sharing and Caring project. As a consequence this sub-project did not get implemented.
The project ‘Sharing and Caring’ is funded by the Finnish Ministry of Environment, and has a number of focus points. Firstly, it aims at promoting residents’ interest and participation in the development of their neighbourhood. Secondly, by getting the residents’ cooperation it hopes to create a networking model for regional development. Lastly, it aims to develop efficient means for stakeholder cooperation including residents, developers, communities and companies. The activities of the project include workshops and various meetings in which matters concerning urban development and cooperation are discussed. Not only ideas are brought to the table; actors are expected to take on responsibilities when working out the ideas.
The activities of the project take place in the Espoon Keskus neighbourhood of the city of Espoo. The three focus points together form the main objective of establishing a local model for urban development which empowers residents to participate in city planning.
The CTP arose when the Laurea Living Lab had to work together with other actors in these workshops. This was during the months January until May 2015 in the last year of the 2,5 year project. A couple of stakeholders with a certain ‘status of establishment’ started to compete with each other over which actor gets assigned to which task within the Sharing and Caring project. This ‘status of establishments’ refers to the position of key actors like civil servants or entrepreneurs, who have access to resources and knowledge. Since the Sharing and Caring project was all about co-production of a local model for urban development, it was not intended to become a battle arena for entrepreneurs and governmental organizations to show off their power. This competitive attitude constituted a CTP because it overshadowed the original project design in which every actor would work on equal footing and work together to achieve the projects’ goals. N.B., this CTP is strongly related to CTP X that was about the entrepreneurs and civil servants ignoring the residents (and the consequence of the residents becoming frustrated about this). This CTP mainly focuses on the relation between entrepreneurs and civil servants, and the consequences for the project itself.
The Laurea Living Lab network calls itself an 'innovation ecosystem', working together with various actors or 'social partners' like mentioned under 'Contents'. These actors share a common interest in developing service innovation and smart solutions in certain domains of life. The 'Sharing and Caring project' is a project under the umbrella of the Laurea Living Lab. A variety of actors were made part of the Sharing and Caring project, as each actor (residents, governmental organizations and entrepreneurs) could bring along their own set of skills and knowledge.
As mentioned under ‘contents’, the Sharing and Caring project lasted for 2,5 years the project ended 31 December 2015. Community workshops took place in the period from January until May 2015. In these months, the different visions and ideas of all 46 participating actors would come together. These actors ranged from residents with very limited resources, to actors like entrepreneurs who obviously had more assets at their disposal. It was at the essence of the project to not only create a local model for urban development, but also to start a process that brought different actors together.
This CTP is about the consequences of the competitive relationship between the civil servants and the entrepreneurs in the Sharing and Caring project, hence those were the actors who mainly produced this CTP. But they were not alone. Their relationship also got shaped by the role that the residents played as well as by the role of the project leaders, the Laurea Living Lab. The Laurea Labs project team was experienced in designing a co-productive process and they managed to bring 46 actors together. As the interviewee explained: “The actors involved in the community workshops were selected in various ways: In a series of ongoing interviews (see anticipation) by means of snowball sampling), by observation in local events, by recommendations from residents and municipalities and following from the initiative and own interest of the actors. We, [the sharing and Caring project team] identified 4 important actor roles/ groups: residents, developers, providers, utilizers. We send 60 invitations, and we got 46 participants. They were motivated since they realized that this is the least advantaged district in Espoo city, and they are not favoured in in decision-making, so something must change. Also the planning process for [redeveloping] the community centre started and everyone was interested to know who was going to maintain it and what activities would be there. Many stakeholders wanted to promote the youngsters future (both native and immigrants), they considered it an important question.”
The most concrete point of dispute was the agreement of who was responsible for the community centre, this is described in detail in the section on contestation.
Related events that led up to this CTP were the starting point of the Sharing and Caring project after the decision of the Espoo city council to re-develop the Espoon Keskus area. In turn, this decision led to the establishment of the Sharing and Caring project and the creation of its goals. When developing the Sharing and Caring project, it was found important to involve the residents of the Espoon Keskus area, as it was their neighbourhood that was being re-developed, also see CTP X.
Discussions about the development of a community centre. An important related event during the period of the community workshop in the final year of the project was the planned development of a community centre in the Espoon Keskus area. As mentioned in ‘contestation’, there was much discussion between the parties about who was going to take on responsibilities in building and maintaining the community centre.
The interviewee explained: “The unofficial discussions of the community centre had been going on already for 20 years, but [at the time of the Caring and Sharing project] several community centres were built in other districts and Espoon Keskus was supposed to be the “next one”. There was a competition between different voluntary organizations (..). During the planning period there had to be an official “owner” of the centre. In this case that was naturally the adult social work, a section in the city councils’ social work department. But they [the city] wanted a “new” kind of centre and they wanted to keep the process and ownership open. A “new” means a hybrid one owned, maintained and organized in multiple ways [by multiple actors]: the city, residents, organizations, associations etc. The official discussions started in autumn 2015.”
As civil servants and entrepreneurs were involved in a competitive squabble over who was going to take these responsibilities, the residents were left without action or answers. ''They [the established actors like civil servants and entrepreneurs] did not feel like actually working, they held their institutionalized positions and also seemed to have a competition going on amongst themselves. As I mentioned, this was the time when the community workshops were held, where we were all supposed to decide on the building of the community centre. In this workshop, there was a big competition between professionals over the tasks, management and responsibilities concerning the community centre. Who could own it? Who could organize it? Who is maintaining it? Who can get it? This was really easily seen in the community workshops by us and the residents.''
This was a main event in which the established and competitive nature of civil servants and entrepreneurs harmed the co-production in the Sharing and Caring project. ''These actors had their own priorities with them, this was not the intention of the project.''
Since the civil servants, some bigger voluntary organisations and the entrepreneurs are part of established institutions they had a prominent, powerful and dominant position. The priorities that they brought to the table and the competitiveness between them soon started to overshadow the needs and priorities of the 'users' (residents). This CTP evoked a division between the established actors on one side, and the residents and resident organizations on the other. This hindered the manner of co-production as was originally intended by the Laurea Living Lab.
The contestation within this CTP revolved around the way some actors positioned themselves in the Sharing and Caring project. Civil servants and entrepreneurs tended to see the project as a competition over the allocation of tasks and responsibilities, and from this position they started competing with voluntary organizations. Some background provided by the interviewee clarifies this more: “The biggest voluntary organizations wanted to “grow” in the area and the wanted to develop the area in the way they wanted. In [area development in general and specifically in developing a community centre in] Finland there are actually 2 main ways to progress. The more official one, which means that the municipalities takes a leading role and takes ownership of the community center, and also a control over the activities and the users (the social work approach). Or the voluntary organizations’ way, where they would own and maintain the community center [and they have an approach of] trusting the residents and [this approach is] avoiding the official stigmatizing of the social work approach.“ This meant that the civil servants and entrepreneurs were mainly interested in brainstorming and discussion sessions. During such discussions they had a competitive attitude and they avoided to actually take on responsibilities and develop actions in the Sharing and Caring project.
As previously mentioned, actors of various standing had to collaborate on an equal level in these last few months. The interviewee mentions that civil servants and entrepreneurs that participated on the project tried to hold on to their positions as parts of an organizational construct. They were somehow not able to put themselves on equal footing with the residents, and communicative incompatibility caused a division between themselves, but also between residents and the established actors. For the Laurea living Lab it was desirable that the residents and established actors would work together, as this was according to the projects’ original design. So they tried to smoothen the relationship between the professional actors themselves, (e.g. the civil servants and entrepreneurs), as well as between the professional actors and the residents. Despite the efforts of the living lab, the relationship never got really fruitful.
In ‘related events’, the community workshops that were set up by the established actors was mentioned. Those events illustrate how the professional actors engaged with each other, but it also showed how their behaviour resulted in contestation with the residents (also see CTP4). In the workshops, the question who was going to supervise the building and continuous maintenance of the centre arose. The established actors could not work out the division of tasks. As a consequence the community centre was not further developed. The community workshops were an important moment of realization for the residents. They realized that even though they were part of the Sharing and Caring project, they were not so much in control as these civil servants and entrepreneurs were. ‘’It seemed already in those community workshops… I mean, it was so obvious that some of those actors already had meetings beforehand [before the community workshop with the residents about the development of a community centre]. They kind of planned what to say [to the residents], so collaboration was kind of a thing they lacked.’’
The interviewee elaborates that the researchers of the Laurea Living Lab noticed this established behaviour immediately during the community workshop, but it was a difficult problem to solve as the actors started to prioritize their own goals from that point onwards. The contestation was not overcome in the sense that the original concept of co-production as devised for the Sharing and Caring project was fully maintained.
The competitive attitude of the civil servants and entrepreneurs in community workshops was immediately noticed by the Laurea Living Lab. The problem of this competitive attitude were intuitively understood and the implications could be derived by the Laurea Living Lab. The process leading up to this CTP however, was quite unforeseen. The Laurea Living Lab did have interviews with all actors in the very beginning of the project, and during these interviews there was no reason to assume that these actors would act this way two years later. In ‘related events’ the project design was explained, in which all actors would brainstorm and co-produce after two years of working independently. Although not confirmed by the interviewee, it is possible that the Laurea Living Lab could not have seen this ‘competitive attitude’ develop during these two years because each actor worked separately until the ending phase begun.
In short, at the time the CTP occurred, the Living Lab understood what was going on and understood the direct or indirect consequences of it. Other actors, especially the residents, also noticed the CTP and were the main actors who felt the consequences of the competitive behaviour. By the time the CTP took place, there was not enough time for the Laurea Living Lab to act upon the situation. Additionally, already two years of work had been sunken into the project, and the competitive actors could not be replaced.
The interviewee made clear that civil servants and entrepreneurs were not committed to the project because of the way the project was designed. Instead of collaborating on the basis of mutual benefit, these actors started to play a tug war amongst themselves for who gets to decide what happens in the Sharing and Caring project. Therefore, the interviewee suggested that in the future, residents could be made in charge, in order to prevent corporate or governmental agendas from hijacking the project. ‘’Especially the role of the residents is important, in fact in the future it might be better to give residents a leading role in the workshops.’
After the community workshops with the competition over the community centre, the Sharing and Caring project moved on to the ‘restaurant day’; a street festival in which all actors from the Sharing and Caring project would sell homemade food. Although not mentioned in ‘related events’ (because it was not directly a cause of the CTP, however it is mentioned in other CTPs of the Sharing and Caring project), this ‘restaurant day’ was a very important occurrence since it made the Laurea Living Lab discover a commitment motivator for such projects. Because the residents and resident organizations learned from the community workshops that actors like civil servants and entrepreneurs rather chased their own goals, the residents decided to work separately from these actors in setting up the restaurant day. The restaurant day organized by the residents became a success and got exposure in local media. This positive exposure made organizations (who organized their own, less successful restaurant day) enthusiastic about the residents’ way of organizing things. This event shows that it is sometimes best to leave the directing of projects to residents, as the interviewee concludes.
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