During the transnational meeting in Utrecht, WP3 held a short workshop focusing on finalising the regional strategies that each region has been working on in the past months.
It started with a quick overview of the results of the Quick Scan COVE Maturity that was used by every region before the summer, to gain insights into the developmental potential of their COVE. The next step for the regions was to transfer these insights into a regional strategy, helping them to determine their focus.
After this overview we went to the main part of this workshop: the regional strategies. Each region made a draft of their strategy using the provided blueprint. This blueprint is a brainstorming tool and contains the following parts:
- Vision for the COVE
- Challenges: What are the main obstacles of bringing your COVE to the next level/ towards your vision?
- Opportunities: Where do you see opportunities to move the Cove towards your vision when looking at the skills that are being developed in your cove and when looking at the good practices in your cove?
- Aspirations: What would success look like?
- Points fordevelopment: What points for development (e.g. from the maturity scan) can you focus on that will have the most impact?
- Focus area: What problems will you include in your strategy, and what aspects will you leave out?
- Activities: What first steps can you take connected to your focus areas?
The participants in the workshop were asked to first discuss their strategy with the others present from their own region and formulate 1) a big challenge for their COVE that needs their focus the upcoming years and 2) a great opportunity they see for their COVE that they want to seize. After that, the participants were mixed up in groups each containing two different regions and asked to 1) help each other with regards to the big challenge for their COVEs and b) generate ideas how the other COVE could seize its great opportunity, using the good practices to inspire each other.
The upcoming weeks the regions will use the ideas and feedback they gained in this workshop to finalize their strategy, which will be the starting point for working out the regional development plans.
