Page - (000205) - in Knowledge and Networks

199 example, all interviews began with an open invitation such as, “Just start telling me how you personally initially encountered the issue of electromobility.” Subsequently, discussion turned to more specific topics in six thematic blocks: (a) the region’s socioeconomic conditions when the field of electromobility was still nascent, (b) the general developments in that field, (c) the way(s) in which the interviewee’s organi- zation executed and planned activities, (d) the observable actor constellations and hidden interests in the region, (e) an assessment of the attempts at regional coordi- nation between organizations and sectors, and (f) a short reflection and outlook. For the purpose of this publication, relevant quotations have been translated verbatim by the authors. A second data source for this study is a collection of more than 150 official and internal documents published between summer 2007 and early 2012. It encom- passes about 3000 pages of reports, press releases, presentations, and other material stemming from industry and government. This compilation was used predominantly to construct, or reconstruct, the hard facts of the processual developments. A third source of data is the nonparticipant observations made by the second author while at 28 events such as expert meetings, conferences, and project presentations over a 2-year period until fall 2011, attendance that resulted in more than 250 pages of personal notes. This written record covered information he gathered verbally and visually throughout the official program of each event. It included not only notes from presentations and round-table discussions but also personal impressions. Although we are far from claiming that this source even approximates a coherent ethnography, we used them to guarantee a rather nuanced assessment of the “soft facts” about the processual developments in the regional and national context. To analyze the data, we had all the interview material (more than 30.5 h) fully transcribed and encoded with a QDA software in a thematic and temporal way. We then added the data derived from the official and internal documents and from the personal notes, attached them to the thematic and temporal codings, and further elaborated on them (more than 2250 codes in all). The combination of these three data sources offered multiple perspectives on certain events, processes, relations, interests, and the like. In this phase of data analysis, we created both a national and a regional timeline of the events and processes. Applying a temporal bracketing strategy (Langley, 1999), we decomposed three distinct periods to sequence the processes and events chronologically for analytic purposes. In accordance with the theory of organizational path dependence (Sydow et al., 2009), we call these periods the preformation phase, the critical juncture, and the formation phase. We used them to structure our process description and to support our conceptual argument with empirical evidence that—at least in the case of regional electromobility initia- tives—platforming strategies were being used to open the scope for new regional path-building or path-shaping activities at a fairly early stage. Although we assumed continuity within each period and a certain degree of discontinuity at its boundaries, we omitted later phases in the process, particularly the lock-in phase, because there were no indications that the new technology or knowledge path might already have reached that stage. We focused instead on the early phase of a path by zooming in on these periods before, during, and after the critical juncture. We also focused on 10 Platforming for Path-Breaking