Participatory governance and public-private partnership forms in cultural heritage management: strategy, organization and innovation

This study explores how enabling and participatory governance architectures foster innovation in the cultural sector. It assesses whether the Commons-Enabling Institutional Ecosystem (CEIE)—an original framework developed by the authors—can support the design and interpretation of Special Public-Private Partnerships (SPPPs) introduced by Legislative Decree 36/2023. The study adopts a conceptual-abductive approach combined with a comparative qualitative analysis of two SPPPs in Central and Southern Italy, based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with institutional and civic stakeholders. Preliminary results suggest that SPPPs can function as adaptive ecosystems in which public, private, and civic actors co-produce public value through distributed leadership, trust-based collaboration, and responsible innovation. Findings highlight the need for enabling institutional frameworks, impact-oriented evaluation systems, and new capabilities to support co-design and hybrid cultural governance. The exploratory and context-bound nature of the cases represents the main limitation, calling for broader empirical validation in diverse geographic or institutional settings. The study proposes an integrated framework linking commons-based governance, hybrid partnerships, and public entrepreneurship.