Crafting Collaboration: a conceptual exploration of strategizing by constituents in HUBs

This conceptual conference paper intends to examine strategy development by constituents operating in regional HUBs. HUBs are polymorphic, horizontal network structures connecting diverse constituents linked by a common aim to cooperate, co-create shared values, and realize common goals. A HUB emerges as a form of organising structure, to some extent, in the realisation of common goals and enabling value creation by the cooperating constituents. HUBs evolve over time into value creating networking forms of organising that may contribute to regional developments. In a HUB, an incremental process emerges in which constituents develop strategies, whether deliberately or not, to accumulate human, social, natural, physical, and financial capital in order to accomplish common goals and to co-create shared values. We refer to this process as strategizing by constituents in HUBs. How this process evolves is ambiguous and can be construed as an engagement with cooperation and value creation as elements of a strategizing process that has an emerging character. This contribution sets out to explore this process by comparing a number of strategy schools whereby we aim to envision how determinants for emerging strategy development by constituents in HUBs can be determined. We find that elements of the Learning School of Strategy fit the emerging and evolving strategizing process in HUBs. The Strategy as Practice approach demonstrates interesting leads as constituents in HUBs strategize while simultaneously developing a form of organising in practice.