Using Process Net-Map to analyze governance innovations in the forestry sector

This study focusses on the analysis of governance innovations to promote the provision of forest ecosystem services framed as social innovations. Social innovations can refer to any solution that addresses a social or environmental issue and that creates social relationships in the process leading to new types of collaborations among actors. Up until now, it is not well known how exactly such processes are initiated and maintained over time. Against this backdrop, an analysis is conducted for three European cases of such governance innovation processes in Finland, Germany, and Sweden. The Process-Net-Map is employed for data collection and analysis with the aim to map the innovation process against a timeline in terms of all relevant events and actors, also marking the challenging and positive moments in the process. Results highlight on similarities and differences between the analyzed cases in regard to the typical roles that actors assume for the initiation and continuation of the innovation process over time and the identification of typical types of so-called action situations, in which actors interact with each other throughout the process. Furthermore, the criteria which interview respondents use to define success and failure of the innovation process are investigated and compared across cases.