Page - (000202) - in Knowledge and Networks

196 Drawing on the insights these sources provide and anticipating the findings of our own empirical study, we see platforming as building on and steering regional resource configurations and as developing common cognitive- normative frames that foster collaboration, not least between private and public sector organizations, yet also as preventing the collaboration from drifting toward premature rigidity. The concept of platforming, whether or not appropriately labeled as a postcluster policy approach, is explicitly related by its protagonists not only to cluster policies per se but to regional path dependencies and this type of rigidity in particular (e.g., Cooke, 2011, p. 307). The core concept of platforming, with its powerful idea of related variety borrowed from evolutionary economics, aims directly at counterbal- ancing the market-driven focus that conventional cluster policies, often with refer- ence to Porter (2000), have on rather closed industries and industry-related settings and their emphasis on the homogeneity of knowledge configurations. Against this background it comes as no surprise that the spectrum of regional platform actors, activities, resources, and relations is broader than that of clusters and is even less well captured by the industry concept still dominating cluster research and policy. Instead of narrowing the scope of actors and activities, plat- forming aims at widening it. At least as important, the concept stresses the under- standing of regional trajectories and a conscious avoidance of negative path dependence and regional lock-in by promoting the identification and construction of competitive configurations of assets and by providing access to rather diverse knowledge resources through relationship-building and cross-fertilization. Because related variety is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for path-forming or -breaking, what is needed in addition are events that help focus attention on new circumstances and the urgent need for eventual change in a regional field or cluster. In this respect the concept of field-configuring events (FCE), currently on the rise in organization studies (e.g., Schüßler, Rüling, & Wittneben, 2014), is useful and can be related to platforming. Referring to work by Meyer, Gaba, and Colwell (2005) on the role of confer- ences for structuring organizational fields, Lampel and Meyer (2008) define FCEs more broadly as temporary social organizations such as tradeshows, professional gatherings, technology contests, and business ceremonies that encapsulate and shape the development of profes- sions, technologies, markets, and industries (Meyer et al., 2005). They are settings in which people from diverse organizations and with diverse purposes assemble periodically, or on a one-time basis, to announce new products, develop industry standards, construct social net- works, recognize accomplishments, share and interpret information, and transact business. FCEs can enhance, reorient, or even undermine existing technologies, industries, or mar- kets; or alternately, they can become crucibles from which new technologies, industries, and markets emerge. Recognizing this, their organizers often design FCEs with an eye towards influencing field evolution. (p. 1026) FCEs are thus an important concept for understanding and a means of executing platform policies, no matter whether they are of a rather continuous or disruptive nature. Despite, or because of, the relatedness of the FCE concept to “temporary clusters” (Maskell, Bathelt, & Malmberg, 2006), it has not yet been fully exploited by economic geographers in the context of understanding and influencing regional development. J. Sydow and F. Koll