Page - (000218) - in Knowledge and Networks

212 contrasting cases (Yin, 2009) constituted by the Stuttgart and Berlin regions. It is there that the importance of agenda-setting at the federal level featured as promi- nently as the eventual creation and work of the NPE. Together, these national FCEs triggered—from the top down—a feasible process of regional path-formation flanked by similar regional events. In the years to come such events in the Stuttgart and Berlin metropolitan regions may acquire the critical mass and momentum nec- essary for new electromobility clusters to emerge. But if this process proves suc- cessful at all, it may well have a rather long way to go, and the results in the one region are likely to differ from those in the other, not least because of abundant path dependencies. The Stuttgart region’s inherited conditions, knowledge bases, and competencies on which subsequent complementary activities had to build were as different from those of the Berlin region as were the perceptions of the important regional actors (the collective uncertainty in the former area and the wishful thinking in the latter). Nevertheless, the actors in both regions were quite successful with their reframing activities and pushed to create new regional institutions, such as a formal coordina- tion agency, harmonized local regulations, and stable practices of interorganiza- tional and intersectorial coordination. These institutions seem to have functioned as a precondition for embedding the issue of electromobility rather securely in future regional development strategies. In the formation phase of the new knowledge path, which has only just begun, political successes have helped overcome at least some of the collective uncertainty experienced in Stuttgart and to make initial reality out of at least some of the wishful thinking that characterized the Berlin region. It is still unclear whether economic successes will follow the political achievements, although platform policies were increasingly carefully coordinated between the fed- eral and regional levels. Even less clear is whether new clusters will arise from these activities in the distant future. The observed platforming activities, pushed forward by political initiatives, may be thought of as an important prerequisite of the effort to advance development toward BEVs, but these path-breaking attempts cannot be evaluated yet. From our analysis we conclude that platforming opens new windows of opportu- nities but may be less likely to trigger the breaking of a national and regional knowl- edge path than some of its protagonists may expect (e.g., Cooke, 2007, p. 192; Harmaakorpi, 2006, p. 1090). Instead, platforming for path-breaking may culminate only in path-forming activities with a contingent outcome. This general insight awaits empirical testing in other settings and with research designs and methods more longitudinal than those feasible in the case studies we conducted. It would be useful to compare Germany’s institutional specifics, which support collaboration between organizations in general and between firms and the government in particu- lar, with those of other capitalist countries (Hall & Soskice, 2001). Most impor- tantly however, our research on the Stuttgart and Berlin metropolitan regions would have to be extended by several years—until the effects of platforming as path- forming became more visible. The platforming and path-forming processes need analysis even finer-grained than that which was possible in the present study, at least for selected episodes of stability and change. Additional ethnographic techniques J. Sydow and F. Koll