Collaborative regional leadership is essential for promoting regional development and implementing effective regional strategies, policies, and projects. Regular collaboration between regional public and private actors is also crucial for overcoming regional socio-economic challenges, promoting innovation and economic diversification, delivering high-quality public services, overcoming crises, building regional resilience, and implementing sustainable green, social, and smart transitions. Multi-actor regional-level collaboration is commonplace across the Nordic Region; however, the collaborations tend to be ad hoc and short-term and there is limited knowledge and understanding of which factors contribute to productive and sustainable regional-level collaborations. Further research is needed on how to build effective long-term collaborative regional leadership processes in a Nordic context.
This report showcases key research findings from the Nordic Collaborative Regional Leadership Project. The project examined how Nordic regional institutions (e.g. regional and municipal authorities) and other public and private stakeholders (e.g. industries, businesses, universities, NGOs and societal groups) collaborate to drive policy change, overcome socio-economic challenges, and maximise opportunities at the regional level. The report highlights the main drivers, challenges, enablers, and benefits of collaborative regional leadership processes in a Nordic setting. Based on these findings, a model for Nordic collaborative regional leadership is proposed to promote long-term, sustainable regional-level collaborations. The model is supplemented by practical recommendations designed to provide regional public and private actors with a blueprint for building effective regional collaborations in the future.
The study was carried out by Nordregio between 2021 and 2024 on behalf of the Nordic Thematic Group C for Green, Innovative, and Resilient Nordic Regions, and in collaboration with Nordic Thematic Group B for Green and Inclusive Rural Areas. The Nordic Thematic Groups work under the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Committee of Senior Officials for Regional Policy (EK-R). The thematic groups are responsible for the delivery of the Nordic Co-operation Programme for Regional Development and Planning 2021–2024 and implementing the Nordic Vision 2030.