The Lada and Velilla Social Innovation Platform aims to promote the collaboration between companies, public entities and the population living and working in the region in order to unlock the just transition of the region after the closing down of a thermal coal plant. ​​​​​​​

Beginning in 2020.

Community Listening, Activity and Initiative mapping, Collective interpretation spaces (sensemaking), Co-creation of narrative-based initiatives, Portfolio approach, Experimentation and Developmental Evaluation ​​​​​​​

The Lada and Velilla innovation platform was set up in response to the closing of coal thermal plants to facilitate the just transition of the region. Its goal is to bring together key stakeholders (most importantly the affected communities, the energy company and local and regional government agencies) to co-design a portfolio of initiatives that enable the region to move away from a coal-centric socio-economic model towards decarbonization and long-term resilience, in line with the aspirations and perceptions of the people who live and work there. ​​​​​​​

The Lada and Velilla innovation platform is framed within the Spanish Energy and Climate Strategy (2019), the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law (2021), the National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate (2021) and the Spanish Strategy for a Just Transition (2020).  ​​​​​​​

A distributed governance system was established to facilitate the collaboration amongst the organizations that promote the Platform and enable strategic decisions to be made jointly with information shared across all entities. 

Key stakeholder roles included:

• ALC - Facilitators and orchestrators. Ensure community listening process, co-creation of initiatives
• itdUPM - Facilitators and orchestrators. Ensure communication and knowledge management, monitor work package development
• Iberdrola (energy Company) - Initiator, High level Communication (with Ministry...), contact management on site, take part in the Platform development team
• Local, regional and national governments - Challenge owners, participants 
• Lada and Velilla communities - Participants

Shared understanding: Communication channels included face to face interviews and online and face-to face workshops, calls, email, blogs, newsletter, web page. The listening process team involved workers from the coal plant. Personal connections were used to initiate interviews following a snow ball approach to organically increase participation as the process progressed. Over 160 interviews were conducted in Lada and Velilla. Information was used to build ethnographic profiles which were then used in collective sensemaking sessions to reflect and question some of perceptions and create a shared narrative. 

The interviewed actors took part in a collective sensemaking process in which public sector (mayors, elected officials, public servants...), private sector (professionals, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, business owners...), civil society (citizens, associations, activists...) and academia (universities, schools, professional training centres...) were able to have a shared space for discussion and exchange fostering cross-sector, multi-actor network creation.

Technology: Technology has been used to collect, compile and process the information that was gathered via interviews (deep listening) and mapping exercises.

Legitimacy: Support from challenge and problem owners (energy company, different levels of government) and the participation of neutral facilitators / process leaders (ALC and itdUPM).

The three main challenges that were identified and needed to be overcome were:

1. 1. The teams in charge of the deep listening process need to leave behind their preconceptions and confirmation bias to approach the process with an open mind and truely hear what is being said.

   2. Digital capabilities and infrastructure limitations can hinder the agile use of large amounts of data. A digital tool that can connect the information obtained through the listening process and the mapping of initiatives, actors and their relationships in a way that is easily updatable and dynamic can greatly facilitate the process. 

   3. The need of more implication of government (local, regional, and national) in the process is criticial to support the different initiatives identified and co-created with local actors. 

One of the most relevant strengths of this initiative is that citizens (in a broad sense) are empowered / enabled for long-term impact as a central actor in the process leading the sensemaking and portfolio design along with other decision-makers and stakeholders holding influence and power (government, energy companies etc.). This inclusive approach that builds upon true understanding can lead to better design and more succesful results for activities aiming for deep and meaningful transformation. By ensuring a coordinated portfolio of initiatives are designed in line with stakeholder expectations, needs and interests,  buy-in and resilience are increased. ​​​​​​​

The initiative is both replicable (adaptable) and scalable (applicable to other geographical scales) as it adopts Agirre Lehendakaria Center Community Listening Process using a system-thinking, collaborative approach to deal with complex, multi-lever, multi-domain and multi-actor transitions. 

The process is still ongoing but initial results include the emergence of shared narratives in Lada and Velilla. Participants were able to identify, make explicit and question some of their latent perceptions. Collaborative portfolios are in development.  As an example, a series of sessions on circular economy, which stemmed from the initiative mapping exercise, have led to the identification of diverse opportunities and projects including new approaches to demotion and the creation of a centre for innovation in circular economy in line with regional political priorities.

The three main successes and best practices of the initiative are:

Specific indicators are co-defined as part of the process following a developmental evaluation approach. The complete list of indicators has not yet been defined.