The Multiple Facets of Innovation Project Management

Sandrine Fernez-Walch

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786300676
• eBook ISBN: 9781119476580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Gestión de proyectos

For firms and other organizations, innovation has become a means of anticipating and managing major changes in their external context and overcoming societal challenges such as sustainable development. As a result, they must innovate repeatedly and continuously.

This book explores the multiple facets of innovation project management, defined as the set of activities implemented to bring into being and successfully complete one or several innovation projects. It combines research experience, in cooperation with practitioners, and a theoretical, transversal and global overview inspired from different research streams. The author develops methodologies and frameworks that might be put into practice, provides a case study of research conducted with an air systems manufacturing firm, and outlines avenues for further reflection on innovation project management practice improvement.

1
Innovation Project Management in Theory

From a theoretical point of view, innovation project management is a research topic dealing with innovation (section 1.1) and referring to three main research fields, i.e. innovation management, entrepreneurship and project management. As these research fields emerged and expanded separately, they have to be combined to understand the reality of innovation project management practices. This is probably why scholars are beginning to bring them closer in pairs: project management and entrepreneurship, project management and innovation management, innovation management and entrepreneurship. The three research streams will be described in sections 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, respectively. In section 1.5, I will propose a definition of innovation project management, based on both my own research experience and an academic literature review.

1.1. Defining the word “innovation”

What does innovation mean? What types of innovation are there? How can we evaluate the newness of an innovation? What is an innovation process?

1.1.1. A polysemous word

Innovation is a polysemous word: there are a lot of academic definitions which vary according to the context (firm, society and individual, for instance) in which they are used, and the theoretical background of the scholars defining them. These definitions can be classified in three groups [DAL 73, BAR 80]. The first group views innovation as a new object, the second group focuses on the adoptive process by users of a new object, and the third on the creative process aiming at creating a new object.

• – The first group of definitions calls innovation the new object. “New” means that the thing did not exist before having been developed. What does matter is the newness.
• – The second group of definitions deals with the new object’s adoptive process, i.e. the way the new object becomes an integral part of the culture and the behavior of individuals or groups. As innovation can create breakthroughs in habits, practices and lifestyles, it is difficult for people and society to easily accept it.
• – The third group of definitions focuses on the creative process, aiming to combine two or several elements and concepts, so that a new configuration might emerge and be implemented. This process covers successive tasks: ideation, new configuration development and implementation. The innovation’s purpose is to provide an economic and societal value.

Let us take the example of the smart card. A smart card is an innovation, because it is a new object (it did not exist before). By avoiding the need for paying with cash, the credit card, a specific type of smart card, has provided an economical value for banks, firms and individuals. The smart card has also provided a societal value by increasing the protection of identity and financial transactions. However, it took a long time before the smart card became an integral part of habits and culture.

Innovation must be distinguished with invention and discovery:

• – Invention is the result of an abstract reasoning [RIG 73]. It becomes an innovation only if it is turned into a concrete solution that creates an economic and societal value. The microchip is the invention which has led to a high number of various applications of smart cards.
• – Discovery is an existing fact, which was present before having been highlighted or observed. For instance, the discovery of the nanostructure and then the abstract reasoning of researchers (invention) made it possible to develop nanotechnologies, and hence new materials (innovations) which have a higher technical performance, such as drying concretes more quickly.

A lot of French words ending with “ation” designate both a process, i.e. a set of interrelated tasks and activities, and the result (output) of this process. Adopting this semantic point of view, I suggest combining the three groups of meaning because, in practice, innovation project management deals with innovating (the innovation process), implementing a new object (innovation as a result) and must take into account the adoption of this new object by its users.

1.1.2. The different types of innovation

The economist Joseph Schumpeter distinguished five cases of innovation [SCH 35]:

• – new product;
• – new method of production;
• – the opening of a new market;
• – the conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half-manufactured goods;
• – the implementation of better organization of any industry.

During the 20th Century, innovation was often limited to the first two cases: product (covering goods and services) and industrial process (i.e. method of production). It might be because, during the first part of the 20th Century, innovating firms were essentially manufacturing firms. They managed projects which aimed to develop new or improved goods (called new product development projects) and projects which aimed to develop new industrial processes (called new process development projects). At the end of the 20th Century, there was an increasing need for new services in a lot of sectors such as tourism, banking and insurance. Firms had to propose new or significantly improved offers of services and goods, while improving their processes in order to reduce their costs.

Table 1.1. Illustration for each type of innovation

Type of innovation	Example
Good	A hybrid car, the famous American soft drink Coca-Cola when it was commercialized, wind turbines
Service	Home meal delivery service
Industrial process	Beer dealcoholization process, the float glass process (a revolutionary method of flat glass production avoiding the costly need to grind and polish plate glass to make it clear)
Method	Gantt diagram, PERT methods, frugal innovation, agile methods
Way of doing something (know-how)	Cutting of the weapon from flint
Concept Marketing concept Technological concept Design concept (specific visual or verbal scheme message)	Concept car Silver economy Multi-touch “Sophisticated elegance”
Business model	A free of charge service funded by advertisements, such as Google
Organizational mechanism or entity	Co-working spaces
Way of using or living	Mobile phone compared to desk phone
Technology	Virtual reality
Standard	Laser disk technology during the end of 20th Century Accounting standard
Law	A new labor law

Today, innovation no longer only deals with products (goods and services) and processes but with every kind of matter (see Table 1.1.). Indeed, due to diffusion of open innovation [CHE 03], a lot of firms sell or license patents, technologies, and other intermediary outputs of the innovation process. As these intermediate outputs provide an economic (and sometimes societal) value, they can be viewed as innovations.

Most innovations combine different kinds of matter. An innovation can be very complex (e.g. smartphones compared to previous mobile phones).

1.1.3. The different perceptions of newness

The European Standard for Innovation Management¹ views innovation as a new object or a significantly improved one. What is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Introduction
• 1 Innovation Project Management in Theory
• 2 Innovation Project Management in Practice
• 3 Individual Innovation Project Management
• 4 Innovation Multi-Project Management
• 5 The Liebherr Aerospace Toulouse Case Study
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement