More than Words: The Innovative Potential of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms

The focus of the present chapter is the potential of participatory processes to sustain a long-term stakeholder interaction and joint action. We will examine how an overemphasis on cognitive psychology and cognitivism may undertheorize and undervalue the innovative potential of platforms. Here, we will propose discursive positioning as the dialectic mediating stakeholder interaction, which leaves room for empowerment of less powerful actors. Furthermore, we will argue that stakeholder collaboration can be structured as testing and experimentation, which adds novel insights and options to consider, apart from the initial positions with which actors have arrived at a participatory process. Indeed, we will try to show how investing on “doing” rather than on “thinking,” only, may harbor considerable potential for innovation. We will further link this orientation with social learning, and we will argue that co-creating, testing, and optimizing solutions allow stakeholders to restore rationality as a monitoring and evaluation heuristic, which is a perspective quite close to adaptive management. The chapter concludes with implications for evaluative criteria for participatory processes based on a social learning perspective.