Baltic Rim Economies - Baltic Port List

Expert article 911 Baltic Rim Economies, 21.12.2011 Quarterly Review 5�2011
Joint promotion of the Baltic Sea Region – triple helix cooperation in practice
By Malla Paajanen and Riitta Kosonen
The climate of global competition has forced economies to look
for growth potential in wider contexts than ever before. Macroregional
promotion, such as promotion of the Baltic Sea
Region (BSR), shifts cities and countries from their traditional
competitive positions to joint promotion and cooperation. The
experience from the two-year project BaltMet Promo proves
that the macro-regional promotion is challenging, but doable,
and it can be successful and rewarding if the promotion work
has been planned carefully. Most importantly, implementation
of the work plan becomes substantially stronger if the
cooperation platform comprises all critical stakeholders. The
triple helix structure that brings together the business, research
and education, and public sector is not the easiest tool to use,
but its power is incontestable, as shown in the case of BaltMet
Promo.
Promotional activities to attract tourists or investors are
typical for cities, regions, and nations. Less frequently these
activities are implemented on macro-regional level. However,
the macro-regional perspective is gradually catching on in
policy making, and even in strategy-building. The EU Strategy
for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) represents the first
comprehensive strategy covering several community policies
that is targeted on a macro-region. In EUSBSR regional
identity building has been identified as one of the horizontal
activities.
The BaltMet Promo project partnership consisted of five
city members of the BaltMet network, with City of Helsinki as
the lead partner, research institutions, and the Baltic
Development Forum that initiated the first BSR branding effort
in 2007. The partnership covered six BSR countries (Finland,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark) and
received part-financing from the Baltic Sea Region Programme
in 2010-11. In EUSBSR, BaltMet Promo was given the role to
report on developments in regional identity building in different
on-going projects. The project was coordinated by CEMAT at
the Aalto University School of Economics, Helsinki.
BaltMet Promo was built on triple helix cooperation. In
macro-regional promotion the triple helix approach is a
necessity because no single stakeholder group has a
mandate, motivation or obligation to take promotion agenda for
the whole region. There is no owner, or authority, to claim
‘property rights’ on a macro-region such as BSR.
The project worked with a bottom-up approach. The core
was to build three products that are of macro-regional nature.
These ‘BSR products’ were designed in tourism, filmmaking
talent, and investments. The product building process was not
to create macro-regional products from scratch, rather it was
product packaging. First, comprehensive research was
compiled on the supply and demand for each product. In the
next phase the research knowledge was delivered to the pilot
team which consisted of specialists representing the project
partners and business sector. Finally, the products were
launched to their target market.
Two of the three pilot products chose Japan as the target
market. In tourism, the Baltic Sea Region tourism product with
a title ‘Live like locals’ invited Japanese tourists to experience
the BSR cities in the local way. This meant, for instance,
staying in an apartment instead of a hotel, walking in the fish
market instead of taking a guided bus tour, or visiting a
blacksmith studio instead of a museum. As the test market,
three Japanese bloggers were selected to visit the Region in
three different city combinations: Helsinki-St. Petersburg,
Berlin-Warsaw, and Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn. During their stay
these Japanese young women kept blog of their travel
experience, and their regular blog readers were able to follow
their route in real-time and learn about their tips for what to do
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and see. After the bloggers’ visit to the destinations, their
stories were delivered to Tokyo at the international JATA
tourism fair in which representatives of the cities met with
tourism agencies to gain their interest to add the ‘Live like
locals’ product to their destination categories.
The filmmaking pilot product was designed as a 3-day
coproduction forum for 10 young film directors, script writers
and producers from BSR and 10 from Japan. The BSR-Japan
Coproduction Forum was held in Vilnius in November gaining
synergies with Scanorama international film festival which was
held at the same time. The coproduction forum offered these
20 young professionals an opportunity to present their ideas on
a ‘pitching forum’ to an distinguished panel of professionals.
For many young filmmakers this was the first occasion of this
kind. The interactive format of the forum was appreciated as in
filmmaking like in all creative industries networking is a
fundamental part of building a professional career. A virtual
guidebook with country-specific information on filmmaking was
also published to support coproduction between BSR and
Japan.
The investment pilot organized Investor’s Panels at two
international trade fairs at MIPIM and Hannover Messe to
introduce the region’s strongholds as well as a Matchmaking
event enabling investors to meet representatives from
companies in BSR. An Investor’s Guide was also published to
present the Region’s competitive advantages for investors.
Based on the experience from BaltMet Promo, macroregional
promotion can gain from a bottom-up approach that
underlines the role of careful product building and wide
stakeholder cooperation. This underlines the necessity to gain
the business sector’s interest to see the business potential in
macro-regional product building and clustering. Even when the
business potential is easy to acknowledge, its capitalization is
neither easy nor fast. The BaltMet Promo story proves that
cities and universities can have a substantial role in
coordinating triple helix cooperation. Most efficiently this can
be done by forming the triple helix cooperation platform that
recognizes the natural division of roles; the business sector as
product providers, universities as source of information about
the market situation and potential, and cities and promotional
organizations as nodes of contacts and communication.
Malla Paajanen
Project Manager
Riitta Kosonen
Professor, Director
Aalto University School of Economics
Center for Markets in Transition, Helsinki
Finland
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