Page - (000209) - in Knowledge and Networks

203 incomplete focus on market-oriented goals and endorsed instead its own aspiration to make Germany both a lead market and a lead provider, which the academy believed more suitable for safeguarding the future competitiveness of German industry. As a result, an interdepartmental Joint Unit for Electric Mobility was founded in spring 2010 to pool competencies and the federal government’s activities in the field. Since then, this Joint Unit has been the government’s sole contact for key stakeholders from industry and research organizations. It is headed by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building, and Urban Affairs. One of the main tasks of this newly created govern- mental institution was to organize the NPE’s constitutive convention. Meanwhile, industrial actors, mainly under the aegis of the Federation of German Industry (BDI) and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), agreed on a joint approach to collaboration in the projected multistakeholder platform intended to encompass politicians, industry associations, trade unions, the automotive indus- try, the energy and ICT sector, research organizations, and other interested parties. Before the NPE’s inaugural event, which took place in May 2010 with more than 400 invited guests attending, representatives of industry and government agreed to a joint declaration that underscored their commitment to increasing cross-sector and interorganizational coordination despite the manifestly conflicting interests of the relevant stakeholders (German Federal Government, 2010). The NPE now consists of a steering committee, seven specific technological working groups, and almost 150 members in total. The goal is to lay the foundations of a concerted and consis- tent R&D strategy among key stakeholders from industry, science, and other rele- vant spheres of society to provide the basis for future governmental financial support. Hence, the NPE became the central place of intersectorial exchange, where major pillars of the burgeoning national innovation system were developed. This organization’s creation marks a fundamental break with the previous political goal of establishing a lead market for electromobility. Instead, the industrial dimension of the initiative—the stated aim to become a lead provider—supplemented the climate- policy goals that had dominated when the developments began in the pre- ceding period. The two regions responded differently to these developments. Whereas a degree of collective uncertainty pervaded the Stuttgart region, hopes about the industrial policy implications grew in the Berlin region. Despite these opposing reactions, the activities that followed had striking similarities. At FCEs in both regions, a targeted appeal to policy-makers was seen as the critical juncture in the attempt to root the issue of electromobility firmly in regional development strategies. At these gather- ings industrial and institutional actors clearly articulated their call to establish an interorganizational platform at the regional level and aimed to mobilize political support for such institutionalization. We now present a relatively detailed account of these critical turning points by looking at three potentially field-configuring or -reconfiguring events in both regions. In retrospect, a cabinet hearing in fall 2009 was the Stuttgart region’s first FCE to move common awareness toward BEVs. During this event it was predominantly 10 Platforming for Path-Breaking