Mapping the Big Green Challenge - The Skills & Learning ...

Mapping the Big Green Challenge 5than being able to assess fully developed proposals from a clearly specified applicant where, forexample, one would expect clear information about past achievements, current partners, and planswith costs and timings. This makes it difficult to systematically address some of the issues in whichstakeholders might be interested, for example an examination of the staffing, volunteeringarrangements and financing requirements. Other aspects such as the maturity of the approach arealso subject to interpretation. 2It is increasingly recognised in innovation studies that the ‘expectations’ of potential innovatorsdeserve far more attention than has traditionally been the case (Borup, Brown, Konrad, & Van Lente,2006). The act of envisioning a future innovative path reveals important information about thecurrent context for innovation and how it is shaped by past experiences and contemporarydiscourses. There is also the suggestion that the articulation of expectations and the responseselicited may contribute to the dynamics of innovation itself in practice. This analysis of proposals forlow carbon innovation can therefore be viewed as an exploration of the innovation expectations ofcommunity-oriented low carbon innovation expressed by a sample of third sector groups andorganizations.1.6 Approach to the Mapping ExerciseAt the core of our analysis is the climate change reduction goals sought by a particular proposal. Inrelation to this we have separately categorised and explored the type of innovation proposed andthe processes by which they intended to achieve them.We also look at the characteristics of the groups making the application. Collectively these allow theidentification of the particular issues that characterise community activity around climate changeand the specific ways in which they intend to work on these issues. Together these areascharacterise the individual ideas which were proposed by Big Green Challengers (the groups makingthe applications). The reason for disaggregating ideas in this way is firstly to allow analysis againstacademic concepts in these areas, and secondly to avoid prejudging whether, say, all BG Challengerswho address residential energy use are doing so in a similar way. We are therefore able to provideboth an analysis of objectives and approaches using detailed classifications (described below)derived from the academic and policy literature and to provide a synthesis of the ways in whichthese elements come together. This allows us to address the question ‘In what way can applicationsbe considered to be innovative?’.There is a tension between the desire to use pre-existing frameworks for classifying climate changeinterventions drawn from the academic and broader policy sphere and the need to avoid overinterpretingapplicants’ ideas in ways that stretch what can be justified by their own words (seeother comments on the limitations of the data available). For example, a recent report oncommunity initiatives in relation to climate change (Defra, 2007) noted that communityorganisations rarely defined what they were doing as ‘behaviour change’ (in the way that term isused in the policy literature) and were hostile to such a designation when it was suggested to them2The terms of this mapping project explicitly excluded seeking further information via direct contact withapplicants. In some cases we have sought to clarify issues by exploring applicants’ web sites or by limitedweb searching on ideas, applicants or partners. Other insights on these issues can be drawn by theclassification of groups developed in the next chapter.Appleby Ltd July 2009