Abstract
The maxim “think globally act locally” translates into serious project management challenges. How can the ambition to meet global goals be balanced with the need to design projects ‘responsively’, that is, by taking local stakeholders’ needs and concerns into account? This is especially difficult for multi-level innovation projects that aspire sustainability-informed societal transformations. In addition, working towards implementing global sustainability goals implies the need to “open up” existing routines, rules, values, and assumptions embedded in the institutions and practices that have co-evolved with earlier, ‘unsustainable’ modes of socio-technological development. This may hold adverse implications for those involved in local initiatives - implications that those actors may wish to avoid. This paper draws on two transformative innovation projects that each sought to be responsive to participants’ needs and circumstances in their own way while at the same time addressing global sustainability issues. Although they focus on different problems (multi-level EU food system transformation, and rural development in the Netherlands), both deploy participatory methods to navigate between local action and global complexity. By bringing these two cases together, we are able to draw lessons on how to productively engage with this tension beyond the usual focus on participatory project dynamics. A key finding is that project organizers need to take on a variety of roles and attitudes to cater for the participatory experimentation processes and for the project’s efforts to scale-up resulting innovations, and to help participants make sense of different scales of systemic complexity.
Presenters
Anne LoeberAssociate Professor, Athena Institute, VU University, Netherlands Barbara Regeer
Associate Professor, Athena Institute / Amsterdam Sustainability Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands Kristiaan Kok
PhD Candidate, Athena Institute, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Education, Assessment and Policy
KEYWORDS
System Innovation, Project Management, Sustainable Development Goals, Co-production
