Communication Strategies to Stimulate Conversations about New and Innovative Materials through Future Oriented Multi-Level Stakeholder Mapping: Focus on transparent wood-based composites

This study is a preliminary activity within the three-year Horizon Europe project AI-TranspWood, and proposes a novel approach for designing communication strategies to promote innovative materials in untapped markets, encouraging conversations among different stakeholders. In particular, this study aims to improve potential new users' adoption of transparent wood-based composites (or Transparent Wood, TW) through a comprehensive and structured communication campaign. Furthermore, this paper aims to improve communication and dissemination of European projects, specifically regarding materials innovations, to society and organisations. According to the classic stakeholder analysis, the approach is centred on a multi-level stakeholder mapping methodology, which identifies and categorises the various stakeholders involved in the project across different communication engagement levels. The first level identifies each stakeholder's position in a power/interest matrix and identifies their communication goals, needs, and expectations concerning the diffusion of TW. By analysing this first level, the proposed method enables the development of targeted communication strategies that resonate with each audience, according to a communication matrix. The communication media are different, ranging from the most popular (websites, social networks) to the most technical (webinars, documents) ones, and the level of in-depth content differs according to the medium. This analysis differs from traditional stakeholder analyses from the second level onwards, focusing on predicting and controlling future scenarios. It examines communication on three levels, namely: the current scenario of new materials, their interaction, and the communication context. Through Visioning methodologies, it imagines these levels in the near future, where the new media will be totally disruptive. This designed framework aims to facilitate the successful adoption and diffusion of innovative materials in unexplored markets in the widest context of the materials systems. The effectiveness of the multi-level stakeholder mapping approach will be validated in January 2025 through quantitative analysis of stakeholder interactions on social media and downloading content from the website; results will be discussed in a focus group among project stakeholders in June 2025.