In the European Union, Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) has been regarded as a means of promoting the sustainable growth of the blue economy. Consequently, where the planning outcomes affect the business operations in marine areas, commercial and industry stakeholders should have an important role in the planning process. However, the business perspective in MSP has gained little attention in stakeholder involvement literature. The aim of this study is to elaborate on the business sector's interest and involvement in MSP in the Baltic Sea region. The findings are based on the first-hand experiences of MSP authorities and experts. Furthermore, perspectives from two sea-use sectors, maritime transport and marine tourism, have been investigated using online questionnaires to discover their views. The study focuses on the questions of who to involve and what are the driving forces promoting business sector involvement. Even though MSP is a form of broad-scale planning, the results indicate that all spatial and organizational scales from local to international and from small enterprises to umbrella organizations should be considered when designing approaches to business stakeholder participation. The planning authorities need to consider what are the benefits and challenges of involving different types of business stakeholders. Planners often rely on organizations that represent business stakeholders and individual companies. It is resource effective to interact with representatives as they are considered to have a broad and general knowledge of the respective sector's interests. However, in some cases it is beneficial to also integrate individual companies, especially in local or regional contexts.
Across Europe, countries are joining forces in order to implement European Commission initiatives as the Blue Growth Strategy and the Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning. Collaboration on how to perform stakeholder involvement as well as create cross-border solutions has become a key issue around the European sea basins and holistic spatial planning approaches similar to terrestrial planning practices are now being implemented in the marine environment. Among the sectors in marine governance is the maritime cultural heritage under water as well as in the coastal zone, where the example of the Baltic Sea Region illustrates how this sector has become an inherent part of the new Blue Growth discourse and the MSP-policy development across the region. In order to utilise this potential, support for collaboration and shared understandings within the maritime cultural heritage community of practise is needed. This research has focused on how to develop a spatially enabled digital and collaborative working environment to support the co-creation of new shared spatial planning concepts for maritime cultural heritage. The development of the platform itself has been carried out in a close cooperation with the actual users including cultural heritage experts, public authorities and research institutes in the Baltic Sea Region.