MDA

Designing theConstituent Process

of HABITECH

(Cluster Development - Tool Kit)

Paolo GurisattiArzignano, June 15, 2015

MDA

Why to create a “cluster”?

• Small businesses become a key player of a national economy, when they create “specialised competences” and “world class industries” (providing the nation with a recognised competitive identity)

• This perspective is not easy, but possible thanks to “cluster games” involving different agents in the creation of new “market systems”

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How to create a “cluster”?

• A collective investment, on a specific set of competences and scaffolding structures, that lead to new products (attributions) and “recurrent patterns of interaction”

• It’s a three levels game:– Macro (to provide rules, values and institutions)– Micro (to organise the division of labour)– Meso (to facilitate technical networking)

MDAMacro (1)

• Collective agents design a long term entrepreneurial perspective (toward a “local society” producing and sharing common values, frameworks and recurrent patterns of interaction)

• Local government shares the “productive” citizens’ perspective and invests on public goods for cluster competitiveness (seed capital)

MDAMacro (2)

• Scaffolding structures reinforce local community identity (provide “cultural tools” for generative relationships and trust)

• Examples in food and real estate:– Slow Food provides consumers with quality

assessment and producers accreditation (values)– Green Building Council provides investors with a

rating system

MDAMicro

• Project managers design and lead integrated teams/coalitions of SME (clustering experiences and a division of labour between prime contractors and co-makers)

• Example of managerial service providing: – Performance Architecture / Made in Italy in existing

building refit (IP and rules)– Crisalide / Distributed energy production (co-

generation technology framework)

MDAMeso

• Knowledge mediators design and lead competence networks (new products or services attributions and technology frames)

• Examples of technical service providing: – SOFIE / Tacit knowledge codification (R&D, IP

allocation, training and technical assessment in wooden building)

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Generative Potential

• A sufficient number of participants (heterogeneity) • Long run commitment (constitution, scaffolding

structures, seed capital) (directedness/permission)• A rising division of labour (between general contractors

and specialised suppliers) (mutual directedness)• Macro/Micro/Meso processes (catalysers/facilitators/local

development agents) (narrative construction)• Community construction (opportunity of action, enacted

narrative)

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Task force

• Emergence by design is complex and long. It requires a well trained team of different skills: – Designer (catalyser with “political” expertise

leading macro level storytelling)– Tiger (facilitator with technical technical expertise,

trusting interface for competence networks and technology framework production)

– Dynamic Evaluator (auditor, ethnographer, leading micro level storytelling, feedback producer)

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A successful “cluster”

• The case of Habitech (www.dttn.it) may be considered a “good practice” of a successful generative design

• It’s involving more than 300 agents around three families of “artefacts” (products):– Green buildings– Smart villages (grid, local operation networks)– Small plants for renewable energy production

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A successful “process”

• Incubation and feasibility study (2005)

• Start-up and seed capital (Habitech and local goods for competitiveness) (2006/ 2007)

• Scaffold creation (constituent project – GBC Italia – LEED) (2008)

• Division of labour (team building) (2009)

• Generative relationships and innovation (2010)

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Annual Budget (‘000 Euros)

Public Private Services (HR)

2005 150 - - 10 (pt)

2006 500 - - 12

2007 700 150 - 15

2008 600 150 50 20

2009 600 150 600 30

2010 300 150 1.500 35

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Last but not least…

• The presence of a bottom-up “technical and entrepreneurial will” is sufficient to produce a favourable atmosphere at the “local” level (a rising constituency, aligned institutions)…

• But the “political will” still represents a basic condition of a successful cluster design. Investing on clusters means “people empowerment”, not only work places creation