What are other tips for societal anchoring?

Here are some more practical tips for further developing ideas for system innovations and setting up new experiments:

  • Find parties that have an interest in a new experiment of a follow-up experiment. However, you have to realise that with system innovations, in particular, new overarching preconditions will often be needed to give parties a genuine interest. You should also continue to involve former partners and current regime players.
  • Design your network in such a way that new ideas are embedded at different levels. Look for officials at provincial and local level and political godfathers among provincial executives, aldermen or national politicians. They can press for innovation and may be able to build political support for it.
  • Learn from related problems and solutions in other sectors. However, do not be too quick to copy what already exists; it is not always the best solution for the system innovation that you intend to address.
  • Search for favourable conditions in existing policy, such as scope within planning policy or possibilities for a different interpretation of existing rules. Take advantage of instability in policy or a regime (such as food safety rules that are being questioned, crisis in water management) for anchoring ideas for system innovations. This type of factor could suddenly make new, experimental developments interesting.
  • Introduce terms that excite stakeholders and which make the discussion of the concepts and projects for system innovation different to other activities. Words are seductive. Also use images for inspiration.