4 REFOCUSING
4 REFOCUSING
Phase 4. Refocusing- Integrate the new gained knowledge and decide on a potential set of experiments
This phase involves the digestion of the key points resulting from the phases before, thereby deepening awareness and understanding. With this newly-gained and richer perspective, promising experiments can be evaluated according to their potential to live up to societal trends, their leverage effects to influence trends towards a certain direction, their interplay with existing systems and structures, and the extent to which the municipality can engage with them. This filtering of attention to certain experiments and surrounding experiments should then be summarized in a document, listing those experiments of which the potential has to be tested( as we will see later, by taking step A of the strategy’ s second part-‘ A-B-C of experimenting’).
Tasks to take in this phase could be:
Task 4-1: Assess the extent to which different possible futures resulting from phase 3 are aligned or in contrast to the desired sustainability path of society. Task 4-2: Assess the power relations that are driving future developments, raising the question which ones are dominating.
Task 4-3: Evaluate whether the assumptions that are underlying mobility planning practice are aligned with the results from phase 3, and which assumptions might have to be reconsidered and adjusted.
Task 4-4: Evaluate with the new gained knowledge what experiments might be able to live up to the trends or influence them in a desired direction( leverage effect).
Task 4-5: Examine how those experiments could play together and how they relate to existing elements of the mobility system. Is there a difference in the importance of the experiments- which ones are strategically most important and why?
Task 4-6: Evaluate which experiments are promising. For this, the literature on the management of strategic experimentation proposes three criteria: * it should seem promising to stakeholders surrounding the suggested experiment, * the organisational features of the suggested experiment and how compatible they are with the potential users’ needs and values, * the presence of a gardener / change agent, who can exert driving force for the innovative experiment. Task 4-7: Evaluate what space the planning system allows to work on each promising experiment and how the constraints could be turned. Task 4-8: Take the insights from task 4-4, 4-5, 4-6 and 4-7 and initiate for each experiments step A( rticulating expectations and adjusting visions) in part two.