## 7 Discussion
### Results from Case Studies  
The results of the case studies presented in Section 6 reveal that, despite the differences between the three public organizations and their starting point, all three achieved relevant improvements across the six dimensions of the SPP Diagnosis Matrix: policy, vision and targets; communication and networking; people; market; procurement; monitoring and results. This means that the tool efficiently develops the six dimensions, with a good degree of flexibility, allowing adaptation to different organizational situations. The flexibility of the SPP Toolbox is reinforced by the possibility of  
Figure 7: Operationalizing the SPP Toolbox in the STP Model. restricting the scope of activities to just a part of the organization and by orientating the SPP action plan to a specific action, or group of actions, as in the case of LIPOR. In order to track the key factors development in the three case studies, the results were translated into organizational factors and inter-organizational factors, displayed in Table 3. The analysis of this information supports the following findings: (1) organisational factors were well developed in the three cases, achieving a similar situation by the end of the project, in spite of the different starting point of each organization; (2) regarding the evolution of GPP to SPP and PPI approaches, by the end of the project (2014), Torres Vedras and Loures positioned in GPP/SPP practices, while LIPOR started the first steps to PPI by developing functional criteria in the tender; after 2014, Loures and LIPOR raised their ambitions by challenging the incumbent suppliers and expanding the experience to LCC, in the case of LIPOR; these experiments placed those local authorities in a better position to move forward to PPI; this might confirm the need of public organizations to gain experience, starting with GPP and then moving towards SPP and ultimately to PPI; (3) in what concerns inter-organizational factors, relationships with incumbent suppliers changed for all case studies, due to early market engagement activities, similarly to networking activities, establishing the first steps for a shared vision. Thus, inter-organizational factors development, which are the basis for niche formation, were still in an inception phase, with the initial establishment of social networks. Expectations and visions, as well as learning process would need much more development, in order to ensure a success trajectory, as explained in Section 3. These results compare to [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2015) findings on the factors required for system change. The empirical study has shown that there is a need to develop both organizational factors (organizational renewal, strategy) and inter-organizational factors (engagement with national bodies, multiple stakeholders, including final users, aligning planning, market and regulations), to ensure systemic changes. Comparing these findings with the results from the three case studies, we can conclude that Torres Vedras, Loures and LIPOR did develop organizational factors and addressed inter-organizational factors in an incipient way. Niche formation would need much development of inter-organizational factors, namely by expanding the social network, creating a shared vision and embedding learning processes. The case studies also showed that, besides the negative effect of the national regime, the three public authorities were able to integrate issues that formed the wider landscape at European context, as well as from the European regime, illustrating the importance of the influence of bottom-up and top down approaches. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Individual Factors** & **Management Factors** & **Provement Factors** & **Inter-Organizational Factors** \\ \hline \hline \multicolumn{4}{c}{**Torres Vedras**} \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{**2012**} & **Key factor changing actions:** Top policy, no targets No organizational learning, & & \\  & management commitment to GPP: & **Key factor strategy:** No procurement strategy.