Proactive Approach to Structural Change

Abstract

The transnational and interregional project Proactive Approach to Structural Change (ENNE) has studied regional preparation for sudden structural changes. The project is financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) via the Ministry of Employment and the Economy and the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment in Finland. In the course of the investigation and project implementation, a good practice was developed for the preparation across Europe, based on an innovative application of futures studies and the methods of collective learning within the context of regional development. These methods include e.g. the content analysis of futures stories and monitored discussions of futures workshops in social media. For the support of the methods typical of futures studies, the project developed a statistical measurement to provide a presentation on the sensitivity of regions for the negative impacts caused by a sudden structural change.

Through the application of the good practice, the project identified the lock-in of regional collaboration as the primary future risk in the Lahti region. This lock-in has a significant impact on the possible realisation of other risks identified. Renewing the leadership of regional collaboration is assumed to be a key factor in preventing the realisation of the risk, which will allow the redirection of regional development and collaboration to adopt necessary measures as regards the economic, employment, education and innovation policies – jointly approved, planned, implemented and strategically justified measures to prevent the realisation of crucial risks and decrease the sensitivity of regions for the negative impacts of sudden structural changes.