12.2.4.0 Introductie

The desk research and the interviews shed some light on the current state of affairs in biodiversity information services, showing many opportunities and challenges. The study also revealed ambitions and initiatives aimed at further development in the field. However, many initiatives act in isolation. Connecting initiatives and instigating collaboration between the stakeholders in the field would probably be the best way to achieve a changed business attitude.

According to Chris Huxham, 'collaboration' in its most general sense of the word implies ' a positive form of working in association with others for some form of mutual benefit'.1 To explain why collaboration can be beneficial to organisations, Huxham has introduced the notion of collaborative advantage, meaning that a partnership can produce things that no organisation could have produced on its own, and that each organisation is able to achieve its own objectives better than it could have done alone. In some cases, it should also be possible to achieve some higher-level objectives for society as a whole.2 In certain situations, a collaborative advantage can be stronger than a competitive advantage. Considering the complexity of the issue of BES and the many barriers that need to be overcome in order to efficiently integrate BES considerations in investment decisions, it appears that this situation calls for some form of collaborative action between the stakeholders involved. Collaboration can take place in many different forms and can be the result of different motivations. It can range from two individuals from different organisations working together, to a complete synchronisation of the activities of such organisations. The intensity of the collaboration can be somewhere between an exchange of information and concrete, binding agreements.

As regards the case study at hand, the creation of a shared vision would be a good way to create alignment between initiatives and to target the different initiatives, without losing autonomy or competitive edges. E.g. if multiple stakeholders jointly formulate a long-term strategy for overcoming the barriers in order to realise the integration of BES information into mainstream investment decision-making. Although this may sound simple in theory, in reality it will be a complex undertaking. As an illustration, two suggestions for concerted action developed by the research team will be presented.