European Journal of ePractice · www.epracticejournal.eu Nº 9 · March 2010 · ISSN: 1988-625X 1 Alberto Cottica Kublai, Italian Ministry of economic development Regional development policy is supposed to foster new business. However, the matching between business projects and economic development policies turns out to be very far from perfect because of the State’s lack of understanding of the merit of creative projects; of the interference of rent-seeking intermediaries; and of differences in communication styles between the creatives and policy-makers. Trying to bridge the gap, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development launched an initiative called Kublai. It helps creative young people living in the lagging areas of Italy generate entrepreneurial ideas and develop them into feasible projects. To do so, it adopted an uncompromising web 2.0 strategy, and found itself exploring the potential of the collaborative web in public policy. Kublai has put in place and animates a small, mainly online community of people interested in developing projects with economic development potential in the creative industries. It is meant to be a welcoming environment for those who want to discuss the grit of creative ideas, where competence is rewarded, and transparency makes any shared knowledge easily accessible. This experience shows that 2.0 methods can effectively yield results of public interest that would be out of reach if the government had to rely only on its forces. Creative individuals ind in the project staff and in their peers the incentives to develop ideas into feasible projects, while the most innovative projects ind partners and supportive institutions online. Furthermore, as they validate each other’s ideas, evaluation and ranking of creative projects (a notoriously tricky activity) spontaneously emerges as a by-product of their interaction. Paradoxically, in order to exploit this potential, the government has to learn not to do everything on its own, but enabling the initiative of outsiders and acknowledging its own limits. And a policy-maker needs to be very clear about the goals he is pursuing, to afford being so permissive. Harnessing the unexpected: a public administration interacts with creatives on the web Keywords Creativity, web 2.0, regional economic development, coaching, peering, emergent evaluation The biggest challenge for a web 2.0 project like Kublai is trusting the intuition of outsiders to the State: enabling them to act in ways that may be different from what it is expected from them, yet contributes, in aggregate, to the same collective ends Tito Bianchi Department of development policies, Italian Ministry of economic development