Rome's Telematics Strategy-Making Process: Sociotechnical Alignment and Clusters

Rome’s Telematics Strategy-Making Process:Sociotechnical Alignment and Clusters

Alfonso Molina1

Mirta Michilli2

ABSTRACT. The paper discusses the constituency-buildingstory of the emergence and development of Rome Municipal-ity’s Eurolaboratorio and telematics strategy-making process.The analysis uses Molina’s diamond of sociotechnical align-ment to assess the initial conditions and map the evolutionof the main aspects of the story. It includes a descriptionof the rationale and operation of Eurolaboratorio, its successin taking the Municipality into many European collaborativeresearch and technology projects, the approach implementedfor the telematics strategy-making in Rome, the advances ofthe process and the political-human aspects influencing itsdevelopment. A final section provides some theoretical reflec-tions on the relations between ‘micro’ constituency-buildingprocesses and ‘macro contextual’ features.

JEL Classification: R58

1. Introduction

For the past few years the City of Rome has pro-moted a process of strategy making in the areaof telematics. This process has been led by theEurolaboratorio—a policy-instrument created bythe Municipality to promote telematics develop-ments for Rome in a European context. Althoughthe experience is recent, it represents a revealingattempt to stimulate a systematic development of

1TechMaPPSchool of ManagementThe University of EdinburghHigh School YardsOld Surgeon’s HallEdinburgh EH1 1LZScotland, UKE-mail: [email protected] Youth ConsortiumVice Umbria, 700187 RomaItalyE-mail: [email protected]

both strategy and clustering of players in informa-tion and communication technologies (ICTs). TheMunicipality of Rome is a major economic as wellas political player in the region. This makes itsleading participation most interesting to examine,especially because the Rome-Lazio region and,indeed Italy in general, do not exhibit a long tra-dition of industrial or technology policy. In thisrespect, the process can be said to be inscribed ina ’macro’ regional context which conditions andinteracts with the ‘micro’ strategy-making expe-rience promoted by Eurolaboratorio. Ultimately,the issue is how the two dimensions combine andwhether the Municipality’s efforts have the poten-tial to unfold and achieve a transforming impacton at least the regional context.

The paper examines this issue through thestory of the emergence and development ofRome Municipality’s Eurolaboratorio and telem-atics strategy-making process. The analysis usesMolina’s diamond of sociotechnical alignment toassess the initial conditions and map the evolutionof the main aspects of the story (see Molina andKinder, 2000 for a bibliography on the conceptsof sociotechnical constituencies and sociotechnicalalignment). It includes a description of the ratio-nale and operation of Eurolaboratorio, its successin taking the Municipality into many Europeancollaborative research and technology projects, theapproach implemented for the telematics strategy-making in Rome, the advances of the process andthe political-human aspects influencing its devel-opment. A final section provides some theoret-ical reflections on the relations between ‘micro’constituency-building processes and ‘macro con-textual’ features.

Journal of Technology Transfer, 27, 51–60, 2002©2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

52 Molina and Michilli

2. The diamond of alignment

The diamond of alignment captures the vari-ous interrelated dimensions of the process ofsociotechnical alignment essential to constituency-building. Figure 1 shows the basic diamond withits six fundamental dimensions.

At the centre of the diamond is the focusof the constituency-building process, in our case,the build up of a telematics constituency. Theshaded areas I and II represent the sociotechni-cal nature and state of development of the over-all constituency (intra- and inter-organisationally)at a given point in time. In turn, the surroundingfour segments (1, 2, 3 and 4) represent dimen-sions of critical influence to the success or failureof technological processes. Table I gives a descrip-tion of the content of each of these dimensions inthe diamond.

Each of the diamond’s dimensions influenceeach other and, put simply, act as an over-all setting and guide to alignments betweenpeople–people, people–technology, technology–people and technology–technology. A success-ful constituency building process is a virtuouscycle in which all types of alignment reinforceand strengthen each other. However, mis-(non)-

Table IThe content of the dimensions of the diamond of alignment

(I) Constituents’ perceptions, goals, actions and resources. This relates to the present state of the constituency’s resources: the typeof organisation, people, material and financial resources, knowledge, experience and reputation. It also includes other elementssuch as current perceptions, goals, visions and strategies.

(II) Nature and maturity of the technology. This dimension highlights the importance of the nature and maturity of a technology forits successful constituency-building process. Adopted strategies must align with the strategic opportunities and constraints implicitin the particular technologies. Thus emerging technologies such telematics imply different requirements from other more maturetechnologies.

(1) Governance. This dimension highlights the importance of aligning the constituency-building process with the governance andstrategic directions of the organisational, industrial and market environments in which it is expected to flourish.

(2) Nature of target problem. This dimension highlights the importance of alignment between the capabilities of the emergentconstituency and the requirements of successfully introducing new technologies. This includes alignment between the technologyand widely agreed technical and market trends and standards in the target market area.

(3) Target constituents’ perceptions and pursuits. This dimension relates to the people and organisations the constituency is seekingto enrol behind it. This includes the alignment of perceptions and goals between the constituency itself and its target constituentsin organisational, industrial and market environments.

(4) Interacting technologies/constituencies. This dimension relates to the interaction a constituency has with other existing or emerg-ing technologies. No constituency emerges in a vacuum. Other technologies, trends and standards may impact upon the con-stituency’s technology in both competitive and collaborative ways.

Figure 1. Basic diamond of alignment.

alignments can reverse this process, creating avicious cycle exacerbating internal and externalconflicts and contradictions. Indeed, care must betaken that alignment in certain directions shouldnot involve potential mis-alignments in others.Table I details the content of each segment andthe issues of alignment posed for each segment ofthe diamond.

Rome’s Telematics Strategy-Making Process 53

3. The constituency-building story ofEurolaboratorio

Overview of initial conditions

Table II follows the diamond of alignment to setout the initial alignment conditions of the Euro-laboratorio’s constituency-building process.

These initial alignment conditions have shapeddeeply the content, magnitude of the challengeand achievements of the experience of Eurolab.Below the text follows the story of Eurolab’sconstituency-building and seeks to identify andexplicitly point out the influence of the differ-ent dimensions of the diamond of alignment. Thisinfluence is indicated inside the text as for instance[D2], [D1-2] or [D1-2-4].

Table IIOverview of initial alignment conditions

(I) Constituents’ perceptions, goals, actions and resources. The Eurolaboratorio’s constituency-building process started in 1994 witha few individuals and a vision of telematics helping the Municipality of Rome to improve the cost-performance of its services aswell as the democratic participation of its citizens. It was all to be constructed, resources were lacking and the municipality couldnot invest either. In fact, there were only a few constituents inside the municipality. This meant that much of the action in theinitial stage would be dedicated to expand the financial and human resources and to strengthen the role of Eurolaboratorio insidethe City.

(II) Nature and maturity of the technology. Telematics technologies and the City’s services they enable are in the new and emergingcategory, requiring both further development and much user involvement in their specific applications and implementation.

Alignment (1)—Governance Eurolab had no formal initial governance, it was just a small team with a vision with the potentialto alter radically the content and way the City provided its services and interacted with its citizens. It was a problem of thedialectics of agency and structure and, for Eurolab’s agency, the structure and its governance had several layers: (a) the City’sintra-organisational and political governance; (b) the Rome’s ICT industry governance; and (c) the governance of Europeancollaborative projects. Of these, the most immediately relevant for Eurolab were (a) and (c). Structural governance (b) is the mostrelevant to the long-term goal of industrial clustering therefore one that could be approached gradually once (a) and (c) wouldhave created the resources.

Alignment (2)—Nature of target problem. The telematics transformation of the City’s services was understood to be a long-termprocess. Specific telematics target problems were to a certain extent opportunistically defined in line with the commitments attachedto financial resources gained by the Eurolab. In this respect, one of the ’target problems’ implicit in Eurolab’s name was to attractcollaborative research funding and activities to Rome.

Alignment (3)—Target constituents’ perceptions and pursuits. Almost everything and everybody were target constituents at the birthof Eurolab. To survive and grow, the organisation urgently required human and financial resources as well as political support forlegitimacy and consolidation inside the City. The European programmes became the targets for financial resources and technicalcollaboration and the City was the target for organisational acceptance. This meant a constituency-building process played mainlyinside the City (intra-organisationally) and in Europe (interorganisationally). The regional dimension would be played mainly interms of partnership for European projects and, later on, in terms of the mobilisation for the city’s telematics strategy-makingprocess.

Alignment (4)—Interacting technologies/constituencies. Two types: first, as part of collaborative research programmes. Eurolab’s owntechnical contributions interacted with those of other partners in the delivery of results; second, as leading part of the effort tobring new telematics technologies/services to the City, Eurolab’s constituency-building implies the displacement of all methods ofproviding the services.

Eurolaboratorio: birth, vision, andearly European successes

The Eurolaboratorio was the brainchild of a fewindividuals who saw the importance of telematicsfor the City of Rome and called external expertsto guide into how to link Rome to the opportuni-ties and experiences existing in Europe and otherEuropean cities. This started in 1994 and, initially,there was no concept of Eurolab playing a role asan instrument for telematics strategy-making andpotential clustering.

Created in December 1995, Eurolaborato-rio reports directly to the Vice-General Direc-tor responsible for ICT policies. One of itscentral objectives is to manage the participa-tion of Rome in the European CommissionR&TD Programmes. On these bases, Eurolab’salignment strategy immediately targeted Euro-


pean Programmes to expand technical, financialand human resources [D2-3]. Uniquely successfulin this endeavour, in 1995, Eurolab obtained fund-ing as partner in 9 European projects, including insuch important areas as tourism, culture, quality oflife for less-favoured citizens, teleworking, and astrategic watchdog project called ETHOS that hasa very important role in the early story of Eurolab(see below). This success was an early testimonyto the importance of the City of Rome and thevisionary step of setting up Eurolaboratorio.

It was also a major challenge because the finan-cial resource had to be translated into humanresource and this had to respect the gover-nance of, and commitments to, both the City andthe European programmes. This was not easybecause, as Eurolab soon found out, positioningRome as one of the main test sites for the imple-mentation of new ICT services was not straight-forward. Alignment dimensions [DII-4] in Table IIhave direct explanatory relevance to this situation:first, because the new and emerging nature of thetechnology/service always implies an intricate andslow process; second, because a displacement ofold methods of providing the services was alsorequired. The City was not simply ready to startwork on this field, let alone in the context of aninternational collaborative project.

At this very early stage, the Eurolab’s con-stituents [DI] inside the city amounted to fourpeople working in Eurolab and two strategic spon-sors, namely, Rome’s Councillor for ICT Pol-icy and the Chief Executive of the TechnologyDepartment. Of the small team of four, three wereexternal experts (one in local ICT strategy and twoin European ICT policies) and one City employee(devoted to the development of the local civic net-work). Target constituents were many [D3] butthe political perception of the benefits telemat-ics could bring to the City was still undeveloped.Thus even if the team had the trust of the politi-cal authorities, the prevailing governance [D1] wasunfavourable, with a lack of both strategic visionand connection with the City’s wider developmentpolicy. The need for a strategy was beginning togrow in the eyes of Eurolab.

In these circumstances, the immediate chal-lenge for Eurolab’s survival was twofold:

• build a proper team able to perform in all theEuropean funded projects;

• begin to promote a telematics strategy for thecity of Rome, seeking to identify and build onthe opportunities and synergies existing in therich diversity of Rome’s telematics develop-ments represented by the 9 European projectsand other developments such as the RomeCivic network.

First set back and crisis

The intra-organisational crisis. By late 1995, theslow pace of developments inside the city [D1]began to take its toll. The most dramatic devel-opment was the departure of the two more seniormembers of the Eurolab team. They left aftersome days of personal reflection and crisis of con-fidence on the real commitment of the City. Theyasked the authorities for a strong signal of thiscommitment. Unfortunately, this came too late. InDecember 1995, the City issued a public call fortender to hire seven ICT experts with the skillsto work in the European environment. Eurolab-oratorio became a formal unit of the TechnologyDepartment.

A misalignment was however building upbetween dimensions 1 and 2 of the constituencybuilding process. The nine European projectswere due to start in January 1996 and the pro-cess of hiring Eurolab’s desperately-needed peo-ple went all along 1996, with the people left fullydedicated to set up the Eurolaboratorio struc-ture and re-consolidating the support by a newpolitical leadership that had come in the mean-time. Administrative skills were brought in fromother City departments and the premises wereproperly equipped. Locally, things were slowlyevolving in the right direction with the new per-sonnel beginning to arrive towards the end of1996.

The international (inter-organisational) crisis. Dur-ing 1996 Eurolaboratorio had little option thanto concentrate on the intra-organisational prob-lems and build the necessary strength to tackle allits European commitments. Ironically, this meantthat Eurolab could only do enough to keep aliveits participation in the projects, ensuring basicactivities in all the consortia and trying to involvein the work all the City departments pertinent tothe different experiments. It was useful that, by


the end of 1996, Eurolab’s work had been raisingthe interest of some important city departmentswho were now beginning to collaborate. Thus, thecity’s statistical office, the tourism department,the social affairs unit, the transport department,the USSMAPP group, the office for citizens rightsand others were all beginning to work in theprojects.

However, Rome’s European performance forall of 1996 was not the most appropriate forstrong alignment. Lack of presence in interna-tional meetings (use of English is still a big bar-rier in Italy) and lack of enough professionals withtechnical and management skills to work in Euro-pean projects were now seriously threatening theparticipation of the city in all consortia. The timewas critical.

Coming out of the crisis and the beginnings oftelematics strategy-making for Rome

The difficult circumstances of 1996 began tochange for the better on two accounts. First thenew skilled personnel began to arrive towards theend of year; second a strategic plan for the Euro-lab was devised. Crucial here was a meeting witha Scottish University’s policy group and its leader.The experience of the Eurolaboratorio and itsactual situation had raised their interest becauseof their work on theories and practical develop-ment of sociotechnical constituencies. After longtalks and exchanges of ideas on the presentand future visions for Eurolaboratorio a strategicapproach was defined aiming for the simultaneousconsolidation of the structure and promotion of itsactivities locally and internationally.

The key objectives were:

• the urgent setting up of a team with thenecessary skills to perform properly and torecover the mounting delays in all the Euro-pean projects;

• to define the strategic picture of the Cityof Rome’s telematics developments; inevitablythis would highlight Eurolab’s major contribu-tion with the wide variety of areas covered bythe European projects;

• to start a wider process of telematics strategy-making and networking for the city.

All these actions were expected to reinforce theCity’s trust on Eurolab’s work, thus ensuring itsconsolidation and growth.

The first objective was already happening. Theother two were combined in a single plan to pro-duce a strategy report that would become theplatform for engaging key players in the City,industry and university into a systematic telem-atics strategy-making process and constituency-building. The first study would look at the varietyof activities and create a strategic picture thatwould for the first time give a sense of a system-atic and exciting process taking place in Rome. Itwould concentrate primarily, but not exclusively,on the projects under the City and consequentlyon an overview of Eurolab as one of its key instru-ments.

As often happens, the pressure to have thisreport as soon as possible was also coming fromthe mounting complains for a delayed report com-mitted to the European ETHOS project as part ofRome’s information-gathering activities. Calmingdown the nerves of ETHOS’ project manager wasthus an additional objective. The result was thereport known as Rome I given the plan to make itthe first in a series that would be an intrinsic partof the mobilisation and networking seen as criticalfor Rome’s telematics strategy-making.

Rome report 1. The full title of Rome I report wascarefully chosen as ‘Strategic Telematics Devel-opments in the City of Rome’ (see Molina andEurolaboratorio, 1997a, rather than, for instance,‘Telematics Strategy of the City of Rome’) in orderto highlight the existence of both:

• exciting developments and opportunitiesemerging from the work of the City of Rome;

• a clear space for alignment around a grass-root process of strategy making in which allkey players should participate.

Thus Rome I gathered and gave a sense of sys-tematic strategic purpose to the developments oftelematics in the Municipality of Rome. It focusedon the two sides of the City’s innovation challenge.On the one hand, the changes facing the internaloperation of the Rome Municipality and, on theother, the changes facing the relationship betweenthe local authority and the community includ-ing industry, universities and citizens. The broad


Transparency

Trade

Registry

Roma OnlineINTERNET

CABLE

Municipality'sRe-organisation

POLICYINSTRUMENT

Taxes

Population

Loans &Investments

ROMEMUNICIPALITY

Roma Nexus

Kiosk-services(certificates) CommunicationTeleworking

EUROLABORATORIO(Telematics Projects)

Virtual Rome TelematicDemocracy

KnowledgeAccess

Trialprojects

StrategicInformation

Services tocitizens

OrganisationalTransformation

KeySectors

EQUALITY

MIRTO

CAPITAL

CICEROMIRTI

PROMISE

ETHOS

ROMATRADE

PublicServices

InternalOrganisation

EconomicServices

MAGICA

Mintour

NEW INFRASTRUCTURE

& INSTRUMENTS

Figure 2. Overview of the strategic telematics development of the city of Rome.

strategic picture to emerge of the entire processwas encapsulated in the diagram of Figure 2.

It is out of the scope of this paper to describe indetail all the City’s telematics activities describedin Rome I. Suffice to say that the figure containedall key emerging telematics developments in theMunicipality and positioned Eurolaboratorio asone of the key policy developments happening inthe City, along with the development of the Inter-net Civic Network Roma On-Line and the Wide-Band Cabling of Rome with the private sector ledRoma Nexus project. Rome I stressed that theessential ingredient in the City’s telematics devel-opment was interaction and reciprocal influencesbetween all the constituent aspects. Thus, the dia-gram in Figure 2 depicted the ‘dialogue’ betweenthe City’s own internal processes and the devel-opments towards the wider city and Europeanrealms. Thus, the Municipality’s own internal re-engineering activities shown on the right hand sideare influencing as well as being influenced by therange of processes flowing from the vertical box:New Infrastructure and Instruments (this interac-tion is illustrated by the double-pointed arrows inthe figure).

Eurolaboratorio is at the bottom-right of thediagram, represented as a Policy Instrument, and

for the first time the collection of projects hasbeen clustered under headings of direct strate-gic relevance to the City’s activities: four areaswere identified: services to citizens; key economicsectors; organisational transformations (internalre-engineering); and strategic information. TheRome I report concluded with the followingthoughts:

The Telematics experience of the City of Rome is in itsearly days� � � Now this document should become part ofthe strategy-making process, providing the base for furtherdiscussion and policy definitions involving decision-makersand other relevant players. Ultimately � � � there are no‘proven blueprints’ in the path to the information society.The essence of the process is very much learning by doing.All along the path to the future information society, thewords of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado will ring true:‘caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar’ (seeMolina and Eurolaboratorio, 1997a, pp. 53–54. The Span-ish quotation translates as “Traveller there is no path, thepath is made as you go”).

The impact of Rome I and the networking processof Rome II. Rome I was published in April 1997.Its writing had opened a period of self-reflectionabout Rome’s de facto telematics strategy and thedocument itself became a critical constituent ofthe strategy-formulation process of the City of


Rome. For the first time, there was a system-atic picture and an invitation to take forward aconstituency-building process for the benefit of theCity, key players and all potential beneficiaries oftelematics developments.

Armed with Rome I, Eurolab was immediatelyable to re-align itself with the European projectETHOS [DI-4] who were very happy to read thereport, particularly, given the scarcity of such typeof City’s strategic documents in Europe. SuddenlyRome began to attract a great deal of Europeanattention as the document began wide circula-tion in the European circles of the Telecities Pro-gramme. Most importantly, inside Rome, Euro-lab could now move into ‘networking’ gear andtake the initiative in prompting a wider process ofawareness; discussion and consultation based onthe first report. Both the European and regionaldimensions began to reinforce each other in theperception of ‘interesting things’ happening inRome. Rome I had ‘hit the nail right on the head.’

The approach of the new phase combinedbroad dissemination of Roma I report with aselected number of in-depth interviews with keyplayers in the Rome telematics arena. It was timeto start giving property of the process of strat-egy making to players from industry, universityand other figures in the local government [D3].Thus, the Roma I report was officially launchedduring the “Forum on Public Administration” inMay 1997 and, subsequently, over 300 copies weredistributed to players from industry, academia,and government, community organisations, etc.Simultaneously, a core of interviews was arrangedwith eight players mixing views from industry,academia, government and European activities.These interviewees were asked to comment on theRoma I report and provide their views and ideason the potential ways and difficulties of taking theprocess forward to a new level of strategic defi-nition, city involvement, and participation by thewider constituency of players [DI-3].

This phase of simultaneous networking andreflection was completed by September 1997and Rome II was produced under the title:‘Rome Telematics Strategy: Initial Consultationwith Industry, University and Government’ (seeMolina and Eurolaboratorio, 1997b). Rome IIdocumented the results of the consultation andadvanced further the definition of policy direc-tions, tactics and mechanisms aimed at generating

a credible and widely-supported telematics strat-egy for the benefit of all organisations and cit-izens in Rome. It was delivered to ETHOS aspart of Eurolab’s commitment to this Europeanproject; boosting further Rome’s renewed Euro-pean credibility [DI-3-4]. About this time, Euro-lab also run a major conference of the Euro-pean Telecities network. This conference attractedmore than 300 people from Europe and Rome,including the attendance of several senior rep-resentatives from the CEC, national and localpolitical figures and an opening welcome by theMayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli. It was oneof the largest Telecities gatherings and its successgave Eurolab significant European visibility andstrengthened political support inside the City. Asit happened in the past, the European and localdimension was working to reinforce each other[DI-2-3].

Not surprisingly, the City and Eurolab becamethe focus of a European study looking for‘best practice’ telematics developments in cities.This study was completed in October 1997 andreported:

The Comune di Roma has developed an impressive telem-atics strategy, and the organisational capacity to support itin a very short period of time. The city has recently begunto think more strategically about how these projects and ini-tiatives fit together � � � The key organisation for the devel-opment of telematics policy within the administration hasbeen Eurolaboratorio (Eurolab), a unit � � � with a remit toinnovate and experiment with the development of telemat-ics. Eurolab represented a new departure for the city andhas been staffed from outside the existing administration tobring in new ideas and ways of working � � � Through Euro-lab, the city has been able to move up the learning curvevery rapidly. It is only since 1996, however, that the cityhas begun to establish a full-scale strategy for telematics,bringing together projects and initiatives and systematicallybuilding partnerships outside of the organisation (Confordand Naylor, 1998, p. 35).

The shifting ground of political governance

In November 1997, the City of Rome was upfor elections and the political environment beganto shift towards political survival. The telemat-ics awareness stimulated by Eurolab made it tothe political programme of the incumbent admin-istration, but the actual actions effectively cameto a standstill from September 1997 to February


1998. In November, the incumbent Mayor was re-elected with a clear majority of almost 60% of theelectorate.

Immediately after the political leadershipentered a period of deep re-organisation of thecity administrative structure. The reverberationsof these changes could not escape Eurolab activ-ities. Thus a new General Direction for the Citywas created and Eurolab came under the directresponsibility of the new Vice-General Director.The new senior officers needed time to settle,particularly because the borders of the new postsneeded definition. Thus Eurolab went througha period of assessment, during which all thenetworking and strategy-making activities simplyslowed-down. This period took several monthsand, as the ‘dust caused by the changes began tosettle’ a more favourable environment has gradu-ally emerged with strong support from the politi-cal leadership. As in the past, the re-impulse camefrom Europe where the activities of the Euro-lab’s leadership had led the Telecities network ofEurope to ask Rome to postulate for the Presi-dency of the association. This resulted in Romebeing unanimously elected to the Telecities presi-dency and, consequently, to the foremost positionof European cities working in telematics devel-opment. With ups and downs the path of Rometowards the Information Society is still beingmade by those with the will to venture into thefuture.

4. ‘Micro’ constituency-buildingprocesses and ‘macro contextual’features—theoretical reflection

Thus far the paper has looked at the experi-ence of a telematics constituency-building pro-cess primarily from a ‘micro’ level of analysis,although it has also shown how this experience hasbeen clearly conditioned by some ‘macro contex-tual’ features particularly the direct influence ofRome’s political governance. An important issueconcerns precisely the relation between these twolevels of analysis and the identification of theo-retical avenues for their fruitful integration. Thechallenge is to advance towards the formulationof frameworks that help capture the dialectics ofstructure-and-agency, revealing how the two influ-ence each other in the course of time.

It is proposed that the treatment of (‘micro’)processes through the concepts of sociotechni-cal constituencies and sociotechnical alignmentprovide an appropriate platform for integra-tion with other concepts catering for (‘macro’)contextual dimensions such as industrial clusters(Porter, 1990), or, national systems of innovation(Lundvall, 1992). This conceptual integration hasbeen developed in Molina and Kinder’s (2000), byintroducing the constituencies’ diamond of align-ment at the centre of respective diamonds ofindustrial clusters and national systems of inno-vation. Here, we shall limit ourselves to presentbriefly the basic concept resulting from the inte-gration of the diamond of alignment and the dia-mond of industrial clusters (see Figure 3), sincethe scope of the paper is regional rather thannational.

The basic connection lies in the fact thatconstituency-building processes for strategy mak-ing and clustering—as the one promoted byEurolaboratorio—never take place in a vacuum.As Molina and Kinder (2000) made clear,

factor endowment, demand conditions, firms’ organisationand interrelations, financial institutions and the public sec-tor, they all play an influential role in constituency-building.Indeed, the potential for growth and competitiveness of aconstituency-building process is deeply conditioned by theinitial state of affairs regarding these aspects. Thus, weakfactor endowment, demand conditions, and financial insti-tutions severely limit this potential, in the same way, as theopposite initial conditions are likely to enhance it.

Furthermore, all constituency-building pro-cesses imply:

the realisation of processes of sociotechnical alignment� � � And this highlights the importance of Governance,as the dimension encompassing and expressing relevantcultural and legal practices in the different organisations,regions and countries involved in stimulating processes ofconstituency-building. (Molina and Kinder, 2000).

Thus the case of Eurolaboratorio’s constitu-ency-building clearly showed that a dominant gov-ernance factor is given by the strong politicalcontext of its operation inside the Municipalityof Rome. In particular, the nature and tempo ofpolitical cycles and changes tend to have a signif-icant impact on the evolution of strategy-makingactivities closely concerning the government of theMunicipality.

In this respect, it is clear that, so far, the‘macro-contextual’ features are having a stronger


Figure 3. Integrated diamonds of industrial clusters and sociotechnical alignment.

influence on the ‘micro constituency-building’experience of Eurolaboratorio than the other wayaround. Of course, this is not surprising given therecentness of the ‘agency’ effort. Thus, Eurolabhas certainly been affected by the frequent polit-ical changes in the City’s environment. However,at the same time it has benefited from the majorstructural weight of the City in the political andeconomic life of the region. The latter has givenEurolab the necessary clout to engage in a vari-ety of European collaborative relations as well asin sound networking activities with key industrial,academic and political players in the region. Inthis process a key factor has been the establish-ment of a synergistic policy interaction betweenEuropean and local developments.

Looking at the opposite angle, that is, theimpact of ‘agency’ on the prevailing ‘macro’ char-acteristics of the Roman region, as indicated, theexperience of Eurolaboratorio is rather recentto allow us to see really significant develop-ments. Nevertheless, the incipient process hasgone through enough to reveal certain pointersas to how some ‘long-standing’ features of the

‘macro’ scene may begin to change. In particu-lar, Eurolaboratorio has shown how a systematicstrategy-making process, combining among otherelements, championing, studies, dissemination andmobilisation, has the potential to lead to both:altering the traditional lack of systematic policyprocesses in Rome, and promoting the network-ing necessary to improve the clustering of keyplayers in the Roman telematics sector. However,structural change is never easy to achieve andthe ‘structure’ may still prove stronger than the‘agency’ in the experience of Eurolab.

References

Cornford, J. and R. Naylor, 1998, Good Practice Case Studies,European Digital Cities/DGXIII project, Brussels:DGXIII.

Lundvall, B.A. (ed.), 1992, National Systems of Innovation,London: Pinter.

Molina, A. and Eurolaboratorio, 1997a, Strategic TelematicsDevelopments in the City of Rome, Eurolaboratorio, Rome:Comuna di Roma.

Molina, A. and Eurolaboratorio, 1997b, Rome Telemat-ics Strategy: Initial Consultation with Industry, Univer-sity and Government, Eurolaboratorio, Rome: Comuna diRoma.


Molina, A. and T. Kinder, 2000, ‘National Systems of Inno-vations, Industrial Clusters and Constituency-Building inScotland’s Electronics Industry’, International Journal ofEntrepreneurship and Innovation Management 1 (2).

Molina, A. and M. Michilli, 2000, ‘Constituency-Building inthe Development of the City of Rome’s Telematics Strat-

egy’, in A. Piccaluga and R. Lopez Martinez (eds.), Knowl-edge Flows and Sociotechnical Constituencies in NationalSystems of Innovation: Comparative Studies in Europe andLatin America, London: Edward Elgar.

Porter, M. 1990, The Competitive Advantage of Nations,London: Macmillan.

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