Field Analysis Mapping

for

Sustainable Agriculture and Food

A Concept Note From:

Submitted by:

Steve Waddell

Networking Action – Principal

Boston, MA

+1 (617) 388-7658

Field Analysis Mapping for

Sustainable Agriculture and Food

A Concept Note

Project Goals

This project will provide (1) a global snapshot of the current state of the field of sustainable agriculture and food in terms of leading organizations and networks, and their relationships. This map will provide information necessary to (2) assess the current “stage of development” of the field and (3) define an organizing intervention may significant advance its development.

Background

Over the past decade the concept of a “sustainable” agriculture and food system has been gaining force as an imperative to more comprehensively include environmental, social and economic concerns. With the Copenhagen Summit, there is added emphasis upon climate change, agriculture and food.

This activity is taking place at the community, organization, network, and political jurisdiction levels. Governments, businesses and NGOs at the local and global levels are engaged. For example, even municipalities are developing urban agriculture strategies; major corporations like Unilever are joined with NGOs in the Sustainable Food Lab; in California a major effort in the form of the Roots of Change network aims to transform the state’s agriculture system into a sustainable one by 2030; Ecoagriculture Partners is bringing together governments and NGOs globally to integrate concerns about agriculture, the environment, and livelihoods; the Global Reporting Initiative has established a sustainable agriculture supplement to its reporting framework.

The list of initiatives that can be relatively easily identified that have moved from the concept to the application level is significant. It suggests that in terms of “stages of development”, the “field of sustainable agriculture and food” may have moved from conceptual and theoretical to a substantial amount of application and expertise, and that this issue arena is “ripe” for movement to a new stage of development.

Project Approach

This proposal integrates the following key concepts and methods:

1)Issue Domain: In this case, the issue domain is “sustainable agriculture globally, from the perspective of business-government-civil society”. This definition will be further developed through this project.

2)Level of Analysis: This investigation will be primarily be at the global and international level. However, a simple country-level analysis will be included for the United States, Brazil and India using web-crawl mapping.

3)Integrated Mapping Methodologies: Different mapping approaches are good for different goals. Based upon knowledge of various mapping approaches including social network analysis, conceptual mapping, mind mapping, and strategic clarity mapping, the RFP respondents have elected to recommend both web crawl and Value Network Analysis mapping.

  1. Web Crawls:The internet is structured around sites that have unique URL addresses. And most sites have (hyper)links to other sites that you click on to take you to other sites or pages. These are inserted because they have more detailed information with regards to a topic (including, of course, ads), because the host wants to connect people to allies or colleagues, or because they may be foes on an issue. These connections between unique URLs provide the basis for mapping relationships by doing a web crawl. A software program can draw the relationships between organizations’ web links, to give a description of the virtual network of the organization. This methodology is useful for initial identification of participants in the issue domain and the domain’s structure.
  2. Value Network Analysis:VNA maps issue systems in terms of participants, roles and exchanges between them. It focuses upon the process of value creation in complex systems. This is very useful when you want to understand what roles are necessary for a healthy issue system, what roles need more attention and which might be so well resourced that competition is creating problems. “Participant-based” VNA describes exchanges in terms of inter-people/organizational relationships; a “role-based” VNA does this in terms of roles (one organization may have more than one role; one role may be played by more than one organization). This provides much more information than traditional social network analysis. Data is gathered through website reviews, surveys, and interviews.

See Appendix B for more information about optional methodologies.

4)Global Action Networks (GANs): GANs are global multi-stakeholder networks organized to address a particular public good transformational challenge. (Waddell 2003; Waddell and Khagram 2007) Examples include the Sustainable Food Lab, Transparency International, the Forest Stewardship Council, and the Global Reporting Initiative.

5)Stages of Development: This concept can be applied to any level of analysis to describe movement through challenges to enhancing capacity. In this case the concept is applied to “global issue system”, based upon stages of development associated with GANs. See Appendix A). It aims to assess whether an “Exploration” stage of development is warranted.

6)Stewardship Team: To support the project development, we propose creating a Stewardship Team for the initiative. This would comprise 5-8 people who are from the agriculture and food arena or have good knowledgeable about it. Their role is to (1) support connections to people being surveyed/interviewed; (2) assist in defining some core concepts such as “roles” and “exchanges”; (3) validating the map results; and (4) developing the strategy.

Outputs

A short report of 15-20 pages with key maps of the system will provide responses to these questions:

  1. Who is working on the issue?
  2. What are the major stakeholder groups?
  3. What are the key issue dimensions of the issue from stakeholders’ perspectives?
  4. What are the key components of a vision to address the issue from stakeholders’ perspectives?
  5. What are the key actions stakeholders propose to realize the vision? Are they ideas? Pilots? Actions moving into mass application?
  6. What is holding the field back from further development? What might be done to address these blockages?
  7. Who (individuals, organizations) would be an effective Team to steward development of the emerging system effectively?

Project Activities

1)Initial web crawl mapping

  1. Tentative list of organizations

2)Review of (1). Outcomes:

  1. Refined understanding of the domain boundaries and structure
  2. Identification of domain organizations and contact list
  3. Interview protocol and domain refinement

3)Pilot interviews (5-8) and initial VNA maps from their web-sites. Outcomes:

  1. Draft interview protocol, survey instrument, and roles identification.
  2. Step (4) meeting preparation.

4)Steward team meeting 1 (1 day). Outcomes:

  1. Refined survey instrument.
  2. Community formation advanced.

5)Survey distribution. Outcomes:

  1. Mapping data gathered.
  2. Domain survey list expanded.

6)Interviews (15-20) of key non-respondents. Outcome:

  1. Mapping data gathered.

7)Data analysis. Outcome:

  1. Draft VNA maps and findings.

8)Steward team meeting 2 (1 day). Outcomes:

  1. Map refinement and validation.
  2. Community formation advanced.

Statement of Qualifications

The Organizations

Networking Action and Valuenetworks.com are joining together to undertake this project. The principals of both these entities listed on this proposal have worked together on various projects since 2001.

Networking Action ( is a networked sole proprietorship of Steve Waddell that focuses upon the development of effective multi-stakeholder networks dealing with deep change issues. For this decade the focus has been global networks, such as the Forest Stewardship Council, Youth Employment Systems, the Global Knowledge Partnership, and The Access Initiative. Like RoC, these networks are in the business of responding to complex issues through multi-stakeholder strategies.

ValueNetworks.com ( founded in late 2007 by Verna Allee and a team of expert technologists and advisors. It has developed the VNA approach to deliver breakthrough business results through value network analysis - from board room to shop floor, to business webs, to global humanitarian networks. The company puts the best practices of value network analysis and consulting into software that is easy to use, making it more efficient and affordable for organizations of all sizes togain the benefits from this powerful new way of business modeling. Clients include organizations from Fortune 50 companies to non-profits.

Biographies of Principal Team Members

Steve Waddell: RoC Project Role - Project Manager and Lead Investigator

Responding to the 21st century’s enormous global challenges and realizing its unsurpassed opportunities require new ways of acting and organizing.Networking Action is Steve’s personal vehicle to support organizational, network, and societal change and development, through consultation, education, research, and personal leadership. In particular, he focuses upon intersectoral (business-government-civil society) and inter-organizational collaboration to produce innovation, enhance impact, and build new capacity. These initiatives may be local, national and/or global. The topics are varied, including water, forestry, youth, finance, economic development, and peace.

Steve has done this for more than 20 years, working with others as clients, funders, sponsors, and project partners.Steve is founding Executive Director of Global Action Network Net (GAN-Net) and Leadership for Change (an executive management program at Boston College); founder of the Strategy-Structure-Governance Community of Practice (SSGCoP); Steward with iScale; co-founder of what is now Canada’s largest family of socially responsible mutual funds; and co-lead of the Global Finance Initiative.

Two key concepts are associated with Steve’s work: “societal learning and change,” which is a deep change strategy to address chronic and complex issues; and global action networks, which are an emerging form of global governance that addresses issues requiring deep change. After making a modest contribution to a report to the UN Secretary General on the future global governance choices, Steve coined the term “Global Action Network” as a specific organizational form.

Steve has dozens of publications, including the book Societal Learning and Change: Innovation with Multi-Stakeholder Strategies (2005);another book, Networking Action: Organizing for the 21st Century, is in development. As well, Steve has performed numerous editorial rules including for a special issue of the Action Research Journal. Steve have a Ph.D. in sociology and a Masters in Business Administration.

Steve is led by a belief in, and commitment to developing, human capacity to work across differences and realize our highest aspirations.

Verna Allee: RoC Project role -Project Senior Consultant

Verna is Co-founder and CEO of Value Networks LLC, dba ValueNetworks.com ( ValueNetworks.com is the leading provider of value network visualization and analysis applications. Gartner named ValueNetworks.com as a “Cool Vendor” in 2009.

Verna has more than twenty years of deep experience in value networks, intangibles, knowledge management, and new business models. She has been a trusted advisor to more than 100 Fortune 1000 companies and has led government agencies, civil society organizations, and entrepreneurial startups in tapping intangible value for increased efficiency and competitive advantage.

Verna is a Fellow of the World Business Academy, advisor to the European Commission, and sits on a number of Advisory and Editorial Boards including Hazel Henderson’s Ethical Markets television series. She is the author of two books and more than 50 industry articles and papers on value networks and knowledge management.

She began her management career in 1975 as the co-founder of a networked sign manufacturing company. She organized the new company as a value network – a radical idea at the time. Within five years, the company was handling large installations from Alaska to Florida and revenue had grown to match some of the largest companies in the industry. Determined to carry her insights into global companies, she developed the ValueNet Works™ methodology, which is gaining rapid adoption and is the cornerstone of ValueNetworks.com applications.

Verna holds an M.A. in Organizational Leadership and Human Consciousness from JFK University and a B.A degree in Social Science and International Business from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a visiting lecturer at many universities around the world, most notably at Oxford University, the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), and Hanken Swedish School of Business (Helsinki).

Illustrative Past Projects

  • Global Finance Initiative: In 2007 the GFI was initiated with a successful proposal to the Ford Foundation by Steve Waddell, who lead the project working with Verna Allee and others. It involved mapping of the global finance policy arena, developing a strategy to integrate social/environmental concerns into its logic, and further methodology development. The report is a separate attachment.
  • Effectiveness of ICT RTD Impacts on the EU Innovation System: This research was an evaluation study for the European Commission of its policies to better understand the impact of research networks on Intellectual Capital formation and competitiveness in regions. At the levels of organisation, network, and region, value network patterns were linked to specific patterns or ‘thumbprints’ of anticipated Intellectual Capital formation.
  • Global Knowledge Partnership: In terms of mapping, this project only involved minor web crawls, but it is an example of recent strategy work with a report and meetings with the GKP Board to define its future development. This work was undertaken by Steve Waddell; the report is a separate attachment.
  • Understanding the Systemic Causes of Poverty in Guatemala: This was an action learning project sponsored by CARE (Latin America Region) under the leadership of the Institute of Strategic Clarity. Steve was a project team member.

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Appendix A: GAN Development Stages

Four stages of development of Global Action Networks can be described as having four stages of development noted in the table below. At each stage key challenges must be addressed

Stage / Exploration / Initiation / Expansion / Realizing the Potential
Key Question /
  • What is the issue?
  • What is the vision?
  • Who should we convene?
  • How do we convene?
  • Who will finance the exploration?
/
  • What is holding us back from realizing the vision?
  • What are possible technical responses?
  • What are stakeholders’ roles in the responses?
  • What outcomes would individual stakeholders value?
  • Who/what is a “member”?
  • Who will finance initiation?
/
  • How do we bring in new participants?
  • How do we manage global diversity?
  • How do we create robust sub-global structures?
  • How do we balance “going deep” and “going wide”?
  • What is a successful financing strategy?
/ How do we create robust inter-node relationships?
  • How do we change the culture globally to support our vision?
  • How can we enhance legitimacy, accountability, transparency?
  • How can we provide value at a massive scale?
  • How do we manage the “tipping point”?
  • What is a successful financing strategy?

Key Activities /
  • Consultations
  • Stakeholder identification
  • Mapping
  • Convening
  • Visioning
/
  • Defining the problem.
  • Piloting technical solutions.
  • Creating initial network piloting structures.
/
  • Broadening application of the physical technology solutions.
  • Deepening understanding of the social technology challenges.
  • Increasing membership.
  • Decentralizing structure.
/
  • Reorganizing to address scale.
  • Enhancing legitimacy and value.
  • Creating inter-GAN connections.
  • Creating global action norms.

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iScale

Appendix B: Mapping Methodologies

Strategic Mapping and Visual Diagnostics

for Scaling Change

Written for iScale/GAN-Net by Steve Waddell in collaboration with:

  • Verna Allee, valuenetworks.com
  • Jim Ritchie-Dunham, Institute for Strategic Clarity

For more information contact:

Steve Waddell - PhD, MBA
Principal – Networking Action

Boston, MA, USA
Phone (global): +1 (617) 388-7658
Skype: stevewaddell

Email:

Contents

Strategic Mapping and Visual Diagnostics for Scaling Change......

Introduction......

Using the Maps......

A Comparison of the Mapping Approaches for Building Comprehensive Engagement Strategies

Social/Organizational/Inter-Organizational Network Analyses......

Web Crawls......

Web Scrapes......

Value Network Analysis......

Strategic Clarity Mapping......

Conceptual Mapping......

Mind Mapping......

Bibliography......

Strategic Mapping and Visual Diagnostics for Scaling Change

Introduction

How can we visualize complex, large-scale issue systems like global finance, mass atrocities, trade and sustainable development, and multi-stakeholder corporate reporting initiatives? The question is important both for effective strategic action aiming to affect these systems, and for measuring impact of those strategies. Effective strategic action depends upon a comprehensive understanding of how people perceive the issue they aim to address, what organizations are active in an issue arena, their relationships, the key roles that various organizations are playing and the diverse perspectives and framing of players in a system. An important way to measure the impact of actions is to see how these all change over time.

People perceive issues in very different ways, and this can give rise to unproductive conflict. Productively, however, the conflict can produce innovation, solutions that are more responsive to the breadth of needs/opportunities, and action that is simply more effective. But this requires being able to see and understand perspectives that may vary because of life experience; the “part” of a system being focused upon (local, global, etc.); different ways of sensing reality – emotional, physical, intellectual; diverging goals; or different theories of change. Mapping and visualization technologies can help address all these challenges.

Large scale systems can change very quickly in some cases and at other times are excruciatingly slow to change. Rapid change occurs when a new mindset quickly spreads throughout the system with people both individually and collectively moving in a new direction. Such change does not result from managing, controlling or “coordinating” the system in the traditional understanding of those activities, although those activities certainly have their place in subsystems. Rather it happens when key stakeholders quickly and systematically undertake sense making conversations that support powerful shifts of perspective. A new, system-wide shared understanding supports individuals to orient their activities toward those actions that better serve the whole system.