Practical tools for stakeholder engagement
A case study on six biotechnology cases.
While biotechnology could be key in transforming Europe towards greener industries, reducing waste, and offering sustainable solutions in the agri-food and bio-based sectors, it is still a sensitive topic for many citizens and stakeholders.
B-Trust set out to investigate the trust and acceptance issues linked to six different biotechnology cases, through dialogues with the stakeholders affected by the technology, such as citizens, farmers, threatened industries and ngo’s representing the environment, sustainability, social welfare and equity. These resulted in valuable insights on the main barriers for trust and acceptance for biotechnology.
Together with the stakeholders involved in research, development, regulation and implementation of the technologies, we also developed concrete measures to address these concerns through research, regulatory interventions, and technological measures, and the principles for making these technologies trustworthy.
On top of these insights, we transformed the process and methodology we employed for setting up these stakeholder interactions into a strategic co-creation programme for establishing meaningful and inclusive stakeholder interactions. The program is versatile and is supported by manuals and toolboxes containing practical tips and do’s and don’ts for valuable and relevant interactions.
A strategic co-creation programme
The B-TRUST co-creation programme helps you decide which stakeholders should be included in the dialogue, and how to reach and engage them in an inclusive and meaningful way. The interactions will ensure that decisions about new technologies are relevant, feasible and acceptable for the majority of those involved. It helps you pinpoint the hurdles holding back acceptance, the cues to overcome them, and concrete solutions: from communication strategies to regulatory interventions and conditions for implementation.
The programme follows four phases, engaging twice with stakeholders: once for exploring the hurdles, cues and potential, and once – usually with a different set of stakeholders – for developing solutions.
Pick the manual written for your sector, follow the steps, and use the toolboxes whenever you need hands-on support.
Each manual walks you through the four phases step by step, with the results to expect, key attention points, and practical tips and tricks. The programme is the same, each version is tailored to a different starting point. Choose yours.
The manuals: a step-by-step guide for your sector
Manual 1 — Exploring market acceptance and positioning
Who it’s for: companies and communication professionals in the agri-food and bio-based sectors.
Use this manual to explore how your own innovations will be received. It guides you through engaging stakeholders to finetune market acceptance, communication narratives and market positioning, so you can spot acceptance issues early and address them before launch.
Manual 2 — Exploring research applicability and increasing
Who it’s for: researchers in academic and commercial research organisations.
Use this manual to explore the applicability and viability of a new innovation, and to give direction to your research. By involving stakeholders early, you learn what matters to those who will use or be affected by your work, increasing its real-world impact.
Manual 3 — Inclusive and holistic decision making over regulations, funding and subsidies
Who it’s for: policy makers and funding bodies.
Use this manual to guide and finetune the regulatory set-up linked to new innovations, including inclusive and holistic decision-making on funding and subsidies. It shows you how to bring all relevant voices to the table, so that policies and funding choices are widely supported and have the desired effect.
Manual 4 — Inclusive risk–benefit assessments
Who it’s for: policy makers, regulators and risk assessors.
Use this manual to bring stakeholder input into a risk–benefit assessment. It shows how the co-creation programme plugs into multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), a structured method for weighing the risks and benefits of an innovation, giving you a clearer view of how different stakeholders are affected.
White paper Towards Inclusive Risk–Benefit Assessment: Integrating Co-Creation for Trustworthy Decision-Making in Biotechnology
Who it’s for: decision-makers, regulators and risk assessors.
Linked to the manual on inclusive risk-benefit assessments, there is also a whitepaper available on the added value of including parts of the co-creation programme into these assessments.
The toolboxes: hands-on support for every phase
The toolboxes give you practical tools and step-by-step walkthroughs for specific parts of the programme. Each one supports a particular phase, use them alongside your manual.
Tool 1 — Stakeholder mapping
Explore phase
Who influences your innovation, and who is affected by it? This tool walks you through two brainstorming sessions to map your full stakeholder ecosystem, including those you might otherwise overlook, and to evaluate each stakeholder’s influence and how strongly they are affected. The result: a solid basis for deciding who to involve.
Tool 2 — Consequences mapping
Explore phase
What could your innovation change, for better or worse? This tool helps you map the potential consequences of your innovation and its alternatives: positive (benefits), negative (risks) or neutral, direct or indirect, short- or long-term. You also map mitigation measures for the negative ones, giving you a complete picture before engaging stakeholders.
Tool 3 — Co-creation toolbox
Involve phase
Ready to listen to your stakeholders? This toolbox helps you set up and run co-creation sessions, with seven ready-to-use exercises, from icebreakers and association exercises to scenario thinking and role playing. For each exercise you’ll find the timing, the materials needed and the questions it answers, plus guidance on analysing what you hear.
Tool 4 — Communication & recruitment toolbox
Involve phase
Getting the right people at the table is harder than it sounds, those you want are not always those who are easy to get. This toolbox helps you reach beyond the usual suspects: targeting the right profiles, avoiding self-selection bias, offering the right incentives, and communicating in a neutral and transparent way.
Tool 5 — Co-design toolbox
Co-design phase
Time to turn insights into solutions. This toolbox helps you set up co-design sessions where stakeholders work with you on responses to the key hurdles, through structured rounds of idea generation, prioritisation and refinement. It also covers preparation, session flow and how to validate the solutions before implementation.
Insights from the stakeholder interactions
We applied our methodology on six different use cases that have clear application potential for the bio-based and agri-food sectors. These were carefully chosen to entail range of different application areas, different benefits and beneficiaries, varying TRLs, different levels of media attention, …
Insights on the perception, acceptance and concerns (‘trust barriers’) of stakeholders potentially affected by these biotechnology cases, such as consumers and farmers were gathered through both qualitative (co-creation sessions in small groups and one-on-one interviews) and quantitative (survey) methods.
Responding to trust barriers: Guiding principles for more trustworthy biotechnologies
The principles were formulated based on insights gathered from interactions with stakeholders identified as crucial to the acceptance of biotechnologies, for the six chosen biotechnology cases in the project.
The principles are a limited set of general, basic rules and guidelines one should follow to make a new technology worthwhile and trustworthy.
Responding to trust barriers: Actor-specific measures
The trust-building measures are the translation of the principles into more concrete and actionable interventions that will lead to the (re)creation of more trustworthy biotechnologies.
They can be seen as an action programme or approach and a list of items that need addressing in order to reach this goal, and are based on the co-designed interventions put forward by the different stakeholders.
They address the most critical trust barriers across different use cases, and are to be deployed and implemented by stakeholders responsible for the implementation of new biotechnologies for the agri-food and/or bio-based sectors.
