Making Innovation Happen in a Megaproject: London's Crossrail Suburban Railway System

Isolated pockets of innovation can be found in projects—such as the novel solution used to redesign the Velodrome roof during the London 2012 Olympics—but there have been few, if any, systematic efforts to manage innovation in a megaproject. This paper presents the initial findings of an ongoing three‐year (2012–2014) action research project between Crossrail and researchers at Imperial College London and University College London. Action research is well suited to a setting where an intervention is required to diagnose and solve an organizational problem and produce scientific findings (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Van de Ven, 2007). Undertaken in collaboration with practitioners, the aim of action research is to transform the research setting through a process of critical inquiry and action. Our engagement with Crossrail aimed to formulate and implement an innovation strategy to improve the performance and outcomes of the project. We identified four stages—or windows of opportunity—to intervene to generate, discover, and implement innovation in a megaproject: (1) the bridging window during the front‐end when ideas, learning, and practices from other projects and industries can be used to create an innovative project process, organization, and governance structure; (2) the engaging window, when tendering and contractual processes can be used by the client to encourage contractors and suppliers to develop novel ideas and innovative solutions; (3) the leveraging window, when all the parties involved—clients, delivery partners, and suppliers—are mobilized to develop novel ideas, new technologies, and organizational practices to improve performance; and (4) the exchanging window at the back‐end, when ideas and resources for innovation can be (re)combined with those of other projects in the wider innovation ecosystem to improve performance. The first two stages had largely occurred when we became involved in the Crossrail project in 2012. Our intervention addressed the final two stages, when we assisted in the development and implementation of an innovation strategy. Core to this strategy was a coordinated mobilization of the innovative capabilities across the project supply chain. Though, to be successful, this approach had to be open enough to span organizational boundaries beyond the supply chain, reaching into the broader ecosystem. The four windows provide a valuable new heuristic for organizing innovation in megaprojects, pointing to areas where project managers can craft targeted innovation interventions and compare their efforts with those of others.     

The power of combinative capabilities: Facilitating the outcome of frequent innovation in pharmaceutical R&D projects

The purpose of this article is to investigate how organizations organize the early phases of research and development (R&D) projects in the pharmaceutical industry to achieve frequent innovation. The investigation was designed as a qualitative multiple case study. The analysis identified a standardized projectification of the preproject phases, leading to certain conflicts, such as a severe tension between dynamic, project, and multiproject capabilities, which hamper frequent innovation. Optimizing combinative capabilities to balance the capabilities triumvirate can provide powerful leverage and boost frequent innovation.     

设计管理视角下的企业创新战略研究

随着企业创新战略的重要性越来越被企业重视,各种创新战略理论层出不穷。而基于设计管理的企业创新战略是目前研究较少的理论,以设计管理作为企业管理指导,进而运用到企业创新战略中指导企业全面创新,这是新时代背景下企业转型的必由途径,也是我国大量中小型企业提档升级走向新的发展高度的必然选择。     

基于破坏性创新的中国轿车企业发展战略研究

破坏性创新作为一种新的战略管理和创新管理理论,为新进企业发挥后发优势,有效攻击和侵入在位企业市场从而颠覆在位者提供了一种新的发展思路。中国轿车企业作为汽车市场的新进入者,应当积极实施破坏性创新战略,并通过市场需求分析、技术研发和资源整合等方式不断提高自身的破坏能力,从而获取更多的市场竞争优势和战略利益。     

拇指互动公司

本教学案例以中国内地手机游戏产业的演变过程为背景,描写了成立于2006年9月的厦门拇指互动公司从创立到生存的过程,突出了公司面临发展抉择的难题。拇指互动在创立之初,没有独特的资源和产品优势,时逢手机游戏业务市场处于调整期,企业生存环境艰难,在J2ME市场挣扎生存。山寨手机以及MTK中间件手机游戏平台的出现,为公司找到了一条新的盈利渠道。进入2009年,在3G时代大格局下,拇指互动应该保持J2ME和MTK中间件两条产品线同时进行？还是专注相对高端的J2ME产品线？或相对低端的MTK中间件产品线？选择的战略在管理不完善并依然处于生存期的拇指互动如何执行？公司的CEO方矢君感到困惑。本案例适合战略管理、创业管理和创新管理等课程,尤其适合于克里斯坦森的破坏性创新模式教学的案例讨论使用。     

What project strategy really is: The fundamental building block in strategic project management

Strategic project management is gradually becoming a popular and growing trend within the discipline of project management. The general idea is that project management teams must learn how to deal with the business aspects of their projects, as well as better support their company's business strategy and sustainability, rather than just focus on meeting traditional time, budget, and performance goals. Although this approach has been gaining popularity, strategic project management has not yet become an explicit and widely used approach in the practice of project implementation. One of the concepts mentioned as an important element is project strategy; however, no universal framework or even a clear definition of what project strategy is has so far emerged. The goal of this article is to fill in this gap and provide a useful definition and a framework for the further study and implementation of the project strategy concept. Specifically, to achieve this goal, we first look at the origins of strategy in military and business research to discuss the question of what, exactly, project strategy is; we follow this discussion with an explicit definition of a project strategy. We then outline a framework for building a dedicated project strategy document for an individual project, and show how this framework can guide the project planning and execution processes. Using a case study approach, which included an action research phase, we demonstrate how project teams can adopt the strategy concept in a natural way that would lead their project to better business results.     

Playing with the Rules of the Game: Social Innovation for Urban Transformation

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.     

建筑工程项目人性化管理与创新价值体系之我见

本文介绍了建筑工程项目的人性化管理方式以及对工程项目管理创新的价值思考,讨论了衡量创新的价值尺度问题。     

Situational Project Management for Collaborative Research Projects

Collaborative research projects form a specific project type, aimed at organizing innovation endeavors between industry, academic, and public partners. They've become increasingly widespread and their management is challenged due to ambiguously defined goals and the heterogeneous interests of many partners. We present a situation‐specific approach that enables managers to select established project management knowledge according to changing needs along the project life cycle. Making use of thematic analysis, we develop a graphical framework to describe and analyze project situations. Further we establish situation profiles as a concept to relate each situation to a management method that corresponds with its managerial needs.     

城市发展贵在开拓创新

创新是新形势下促进县级城市快速、稳定、健康发展的关键 ,主要包括思维、制度、管理三方面的创新。思维创新是要用跳出城市看城市、跳出城建看城建的观点 ,树立以改革促发展的意识。制度创新体现在实行政企分开、事企分开、管养分离、公有民营、公共产品的企业化生产、以城养城等新体制。管理创新则包括规划的龙头作用、规范工程建设程序、实行长效管理等。     

Toward High Reliability Project Organizing in Safety‐Critical Projects

High reliability organizations claim to be special organizations that have consistently demonstrated safe performance in operating environments, which are simultaneously of high technical complexity, high consequence, and high tempo. This article argues that the literature on high reliability organizing, which emerged through studying day‐to‐day operations in the nuclear industry, air traffic control industry, and U.S. navy aircraft carriers, might hold important lessons for how the project management community can approach the management of safety‐critical projects—projects in which safety is of paramount importance. Its aim is to consider how high reliability organizing might be realized in these safety‐critical projects.     

Enhancing green product and process innovation: Towards an integrative framework of knowledge acquisition and environmental investment

Despite the increasing interest in green innovation literature, little is known on how and under what conditions firms' knowledge transfer activities affect green innovation. There is lack of research that on how particular organizational capabilities are seen more useful and how it influences on green innovation performance. To address this research gap, we examine a mediation model in which we explore whether a firm's knowledge acquisition capability and investment in environmental management mediate the impact of buyer-driven knowledge transfer activities on green product innovation and green process innovation. On the basis of an analysis of a sample of 239 manufacturing firms, we find that buyer-driven knowledge activities have a greater positive impact on green product innovation than green process innovation. Investment in environmental management fully mediates the relationship between buyer-driven knowledge transfer activities and green process innovation, and knowledge acquisition capability partially mediates the relationship between buyer-driven knowledge transfer activities and green product innovation. The current study provides evidence that internal competencies and the role of buyers in knowledge transfer are critical for explaining the green product innovation and green process innovation. Our results suggest that buyer involvement pushes firms to develop resource acquisition capability to enhance green product innovation. Our results also highlight the importance of investment in environmental management for overcoming the environmental challenges in the manufacturing firms.     

自组织创新式企业成长模式——基于九阳的研究

以九阳股份为案例，以企业如何通过自组织创新达成高企业成长为核心问题，基于自组织理论，视企业为具有耗散结构的开放系统，不断与外界进行着物质、能量和信息的交换；视企业文化为混沌理论中企业成长的“核”，视成长的各创新要素为创新因子，各创新因子输入系统后，经过竞争协同和过程演化，达到混沌边界，经催化促成企业系统突变，从而实现企业的高成长。     

企业核心能力与创新能力的关联分析

企业核心能力与创新能力之间相互联系、相互影响.其中,企业核心能力是开展创新和形成创新能力的基础,创新能力和创新过程是形成核心能力的关键.在企业创新能力系统中,管理创新能力处于中心地位,对企业创新能力产生支持、整合和催化作用,是形成企业核心能力的基本途径.只有弄清企业核心能力与创新能力之间的连动关系,才能为企业创新能力的提高和核心能力的增强奠定坚实的基础.     

Open innovation and the evaluation of internet-enabled public services in smart cities

This article is focused on public service innovation from an innovation management perspective. It presents research experience gained from a European project for managing social and technological innovation in the production and evaluation of citizen-centred internet-enabled services in the public sector. It is based on six urban pilot initiatives, which sought to operationalise a new approach to co-producing and co-evaluating civic services in smart cities – commonly referred to as open innovation for smart city services. Research suggests that the evidence base underpinning this approach is not sufficiently robust to support claims being made about its effectiveness. Instead evaluation research of citizen-centred internet-enabled urban services is in its infancy and there are no tested methods or tools in the literature for supporting this approach. The paper reports on the development and trialing of a novel Co-evaluation Framework, indicators and reporting categories, used to support the co-production of smart city services in an EU-funded project. Our point of departure is that innovation of services is a sub-set of innovation management that requires effective integration of technological with social innovation, supported by the right skills and capacities. The main skills sets needed for effective co-evaluation of open innovation services are the integration of stakeholder management with evaluation capacities.     

Organizational transition management of circular business model innovations

Scholars and practitioners across fields increasingly recognize that business models for the circular economy may be an effective lever for solving ecological persistent problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and growing natural resource scarcity. Despite a growing interest in the potential of circular business models, interconnections between the organizational dimensions of firms and their business model innovation processes remain underexplored. Based on problem‐centered expert interviews with business consultants experienced in circular business development, this study creates a conceptual model that offers structured knowledge about why firms steadily reproduce linear BMs and how incumbents manifest themselves as a constant linear‐oriented value creation system. The model also demonstrates organizational conditions and management strategies that frustrate the reproduction of linear BMs and, thus, enable initial moves towards CBM innovation. Building on this, the article provides a set of propositions on how an organizational transition management may be configured and what incumbents require to successfully navigate circular business model innovation. The findings provide a foundation for a contemporary understanding of circular business model transition management, which simultaneously serve as impulses for future research investigations.     

The Importance of the Diverse Drivers and Types of Environmental Innovation for Firm Performance

Today, firms are faced with a number of environmental challenges, such as global warming, pollution control and declining natural resources. While there is increasing pressure to deliver environmentally friendly products and services, little is known about what drives the many different types of environmental innovation, or how such pursuits' impact firm performance. Using a sample of 2181 firms, this paper examines the factors that drive nine different types of eco‐innovation in Ireland, and assesses how such innovations impact firm performance. We find that, while demand‐side, supply‐side and regulatory drivers impact on the likelihood of a firm engaging in eco‐innovation, the relative magnitudes of these impacts vary across the types of eco‐innovation considered. Moreover, we find that only two of the nine types of eco‐innovation positively impact firm performance. The results point to regulation and customer pressure as viable mechanisms through which firms can be encouraged to eco‐innovate. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

地铁施工安全管理创新及应用

随着科技的不断进步与发展,智能化、大数据、物联网等高科技手段也不断被应用于地铁施工安全管理这个传统行业,让安全管理手段不断多元化和高效化,也为地铁施工生产带来了更加安全可控的作业环境。通过在××地铁项目对智能化和创新化工地的参与和创建,让笔者对地铁施工安全管理创新有了新的认识,希望与地铁施工安全管理同仁们分享。     

管理创新的有效化模型研究

本文分析了管理创新无效化的主要原因,并在此基础上提出了解决方案-管理创新有效化模型。该模型以系统的思想,将整个管理创新的活动过程,包括原则前提、理念文化创新、具体管理创新和改进活动、效果的产生、有效性评估、优化或理念再创新等环节,置于组织的"可控制"范围之下,并于创新活动的每一具体环节实施信息反馈。IBM的案例分析证明了该模型的有效。