P1: H., researcher
Innovation managers bring people together. And then they say: ‘That’s interesting—now we see new connections between these two projects. You can work on things together and avoid duplication.’ They don’t only make the plan from outside-in… they also talk with people on the work floor, and with customers; they talk with competitors; they talk with suppliers and partners. They are very active.
P2: L., more F not really PM
On the health of a partnership, we don’t have formal tools, but we do pick up on it — and precisely because we’re more independent, we can make things discussable. If a university is being too dominant and the companies are just hanging along, we can say: this is skewed, it’s supposed to be give and take. How well we do this does depend on the person though — one colleague is very sensitive to group dynamics, another just looks at whether the project is making technological progress.
P3: L., not really PM
What we are firm about is that everything should be very regional in character — down-to-earth, talk less do more, not too much high-minded language. You need local knowledge and a feel for the culture to pull that off. What’s very characteristic of our region is that 80% of businesses are SMEs. You can’t just send an email and expect it to be picked up. You have to make it as easy as possible, filter carefully who you approach with what, and get ambassadors working for you — people in our network who naturally make the connection.
P4: L., more F
In terms of how we collaborate within the community, we have a core group with representatives from all our partner organisations — water authorities and municipalities. Each partner sends a diverse mix: a maintenance manager, a policy advisor for climate adaptation, and so on. That group comes together physically four times a year, very often at the Green Village to see new things, but sometimes also at a partner’s location or alongside an event. Then we have the steering group, which meets twice a year at management level to discuss progress and put forward new themes. On top of that I have very frequent contact with every partner — daily, really. I don’t think a week goes by without being in touch with someone from Delfland, Den Haag, the province, or elsewhere. And they come here often too — different departments visiting to look around the test garden. We’ve also built some of that contact into structural routines. so I also just cycle over every now and then — you need that to hear what’s really happening. Because if you wait for them to come to you with a question, you can sometimes wait a long time.
P5: S., PM RWS
My day-to-day visibility into how collaborations are actually progressing is limited. The portfolio managers of specific focus points have more insight into that. If an innovation really stalls or there are serious problems, I usually hear about it through our monthly meetings with the focus points, where we go through the main issues and also look at where there are cross-overs between focus points. But we don’t go very deep on individual innovations every time.
P6: M., PM Novum
Communication within the project community is a mix of formal structures (stand-ups, portfolio meetings, monthly status updates) and informal channels that are at least as important — signals often come in through personal contact before they become formally visible. The PM acts as a central pivot with a broad relationship network, both internally and with chain partners. A crucial condition for good collaboration is that the right people are at the table: someone with genuine ownership and decision-making authority. A notable vulnerability is that much relational knowledge is person-dependent — when people leave, a gap opens up that is difficult to close through systems alone.