At the Junction of Project Leadership and Innovation 9788778675347, 9788778675422, 8778675340

Citation preview

Content: · Tove Brink presents a methodical model for engaging in innovation projects across organisations.

· John Christiansen reviews a vignette of cases and presents reoccurring dilemmas and paradoxes within project management solvable through hiring diverse staff. · Benedicte Rex Fleron and Magnus Rotvit Perlt Hansen draw on the Healthcare Platform project to illustrate difficulties of managing user attitudes in ‘collectively owned’ IT projects. · Julie Bladt Goodall and Timo Leimbach review project management education and find a strong need for extending the current educations with more reflective practices.   · Jan Pries-Heje, Jørn Johansen and Peter Møller Jacobsen provide a method for identifying and prioritizing projects in project portfolio management.

This book contains the final results from the Fifth Danish Project Management Research Conference (DAPMARC 5), held in Copenhagen in May 2019. Authors presented their papers at the conference in the so-called ‘research track’. About 60 practicing project managers gave feedback to the presentations and participated in lively discussions of the papers. In the fall of 2019 we then asked the presenters to update the papers taking into account all the comments they had received. We also asked the authors to up the academic standard to “journal quality” and we organized a reviewing process. Six papers ended up in the book. Hence, six set of authors took up our challenge of increasing the quality and coping with all the issues that were raised at DAPMARC 5. As editors of the book – and co-organisers of the DAPMARC conference – we are really proud to present this book with six chapters of high quality addressing issues at the junction of project leadership and innovation. Finally, we would like to thank the Otto Mønsted Foundation and Dansk Projekt­ ledelse for making this book possible.

9 788778 675347

67534 · At the junction of project leadership and innovation · Omslag AUG 2020.indd 1

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje (eds.) · AT THE JUNCTION OF PROJECT LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION

· Peter H. Carstensen and Otto Vinter identify 9 aspects that need to be handled when planning for organizational change management projects.

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje (eds.)

AT THE JUNCTION OF PROJECT LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION

Magnus is Associate Professor in Information Systems at Roskilde University, Department of People and Technology. Magnus’s research interests lie within user involvement, user engagement and designing organisational change. Magnus has published more than 20 works within project management of IT to Virtual Reality design and evaluation.

Jan is Professor in Information Systems at Roskilde University, Head of the Sustainable Digitalisation Research Group, and Director of Studies for the Executive Master in Project Management and Organisational Change. He has authored more than 250 academic papers and 20 books on design, project management and agile improvement.

20.08.2020 15.02

Content: · Tove Brink presents a methodical model for engaging in innovation projects across organisations.

· John Christiansen reviews a vignette of cases and presents reoccurring dilemmas and paradoxes within project management solvable through hiring diverse staff. · Benedicte Rex Fleron and Magnus Rotvit Perlt Hansen draw on the Healthcare Platform project to illustrate difficulties of managing user attitudes in ‘collectively owned’ IT projects. · Julie Bladt Goodall and Timo Leimbach review project management education and find a strong need for extending the current educations with more reflective practices.   · Jan Pries-Heje, Jørn Johansen and Peter Møller Jacobsen provide a method for identifying and prioritizing projects in project portfolio management.

This book contains the final results from the Fifth Danish Project Management Research Conference (DAPMARC 5), held in Copenhagen in May 2019. Authors presented their papers at the conference in the so-called ‘research track’. About 60 practicing project managers gave feedback to the presentations and participated in lively discussions of the papers. In the fall of 2019 we then asked the presenters to update the papers taking into account all the comments they had received. We also asked the authors to up the academic standard to “journal quality” and we organized a reviewing process. Six papers ended up in the book. Hence, six set of authors took up our challenge of increasing the quality and coping with all the issues that were raised at DAPMARC 5. As editors of the book – and co-organisers of the DAPMARC conference – we are really proud to present this book with six chapters of high quality addressing issues at the junction of project leadership and innovation. Finally, we would like to thank the Otto Mønsted Foundation and Dansk Projekt­ ledelse for making this book possible.

9 788778 675347

67534 · At the junction of project leadership and innovation · Omslag AUG 2020.indd 1

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje (eds.) · AT THE JUNCTION OF PROJECT LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION

· Peter H. Carstensen and Otto Vinter identify 9 aspects that need to be handled when planning for organizational change management projects.

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje (eds.)

AT THE JUNCTION OF PROJECT LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION

Magnus is Associate Professor in Information Systems at Roskilde University, Department of People and Technology. Magnus’s research interests lie within user involvement, user engagement and designing organisational change. Magnus has published more than 20 works within project management of IT to Virtual Reality design and evaluation.

Jan is Professor in Information Systems at Roskilde University, Head of the Sustainable Digitalisation Research Group, and Director of Studies for the Executive Master in Project Management and Organisational Change. He has authored more than 250 academic papers and 20 books on design, project management and agile improvement.

20.08.2020 15.02

At the junction of project leadership and innovation

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje (eds.)

At the junction of project leadership and innovation

Roskilde University Press

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje (eds.) At the junction of project leadership and innovation 1st edition 2020 © The authors and Roskilde University Press 2020 COPY EDITOR: COVER:

TYPESET: PRINT:

Kevin Ploug Knudsen

Steen Christensen, SL grafik (slgrafik.dk) Ane Svendsen, SL grafik (slgrafik.dk)

Eurographic

ISBN:

978-87-786-7534-7 (Printed book)

ISBN:

978-87-786-7542-2 (E-book)

This book has been financially supported by the Danish Project Management Association and the Otto Mønsted Foundation

Roskilde University Press [email protected] samfundslitteratur.dk/ruforlag All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by institutions or companies without prior agreement with Copydan Writing, and then only within the provisions of the agreement. Brief extracts for review are excepted.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD 7 COLLABORATIVE PROJECT BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION FOR HORIZONTAL LEADERSHIP IN PROJECTS: QUALITATIVE EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN THE OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY ECOSYSTEM

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Tove Brink

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED ALL ASPECTS IN YOUR CHANGE PLAN?

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Peter H. Carstensen and Otto Vinter

DILEMMAS AND PARADOXES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS, INNOVATION, AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

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John Christiansen

MEGA IT AS PUBLIC PROPERT Y: A CALL FOR INNOVATIVE EVALUATION METHODS

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Benedicte Rex Fleron and Magnus Rotvit Perlt Hansen

TRACING THE FOOTSTEPS OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

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Julie Bladt Goodall and Timo Leimbach

PROJECT PORTFOLIO IMPROVABILIT Y: MEASURING EXPECTED VALUE AGAINST PREDICTED SUCCESS IN ORDER TO DECIDE AND IMPROVE THE PROJECT PORTFOLIO Jan Pries-Heje, Jørn Johansen and Peter Møller Jakobsen

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FOREWORD

The book before you is the result of the revamped structure and content for the Fifth Danish Project Management Research Conference (DAPMARC 5), held in Copenhagen, 28-29th of May 2019, themed “At the junction of project leadership and innovation”. The Otto Mønsted Foundation fueled the new structure of the conference through generous funding and made it possible to invite an international speaker and other prominent, innovative guests, and this new, peer-reviewed book. As Editors of the book, we are proud to present a book of high quality and that you – as our reader – can enjoy and find inspiration in the innovative ideas and research that it represents. The motivation for the theme and content of the Fifth DAPMARC came from an apparent conundrum: recent reports on the innovation force in the Danish industry provided contrary suggestions. In 2016 one report noted that Danish innovative business ideas largely never reached the market (Aarhus Universitet, 2016). A more recent report noted that Denmark is the EU country with the best conditions and largest investments in innovation (Danmarks Statistik, 2019). So there certainly is a need for more effective innovation and for how to transfer the creative energy that one usually encounters within entrepreneurship (Ward, 2004). Recent development in methods for engaging in a creative and innovative approaches such as Design Thinking from Stanford University or the Google Sprint method have really started to take off and diffuse into practice. For the past four years the notion of making projects more agile through the acknowledgment of an ever-changing, complex environment has gained a lot of ground. The Scaled Agile framework (SAFe) has been adopted by companies as they have gradually realised that more and more innovation work is done through technical solutions (Putta et al., 2018). DEVOPS has been proposed as an always-on solution for online services in non-critical situations where deliveries to customers and quick bugfixes are valued over monolithic, bureaucratic processes (Kim et al., 2016).

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But what is innovation really and why do we need to publish research on it? Innovation distinguishes itself from creativity in that it can be seen as the endproduct of a business idea that has been identified, matured, developed and implemented (Amabile and Pratt, 2016). Creativity is then the individual or social process where innovation is hatched from and one can even lift creativity to the organizational level (Woodman et al., 2011). Brown (2009) notes that creative processes can be seen as divergent, meaning that they create choices and opportunities through action-taking. The opposite is then the convergent process of selecting and choosing the ideas or opportunities that are the most well-suited. To paraphrase Brown: “in order to get good ideas, you need to have a lot of ideas.” It is not far-fetched to compare the convergent phase of creativity to that of innovation if innovation is defined as the end-result (Amabile et al., 1996). As the scope of project management continuously grows (with some experienced project managers even claiming that projects are dead and that self-sustained learning processes are the replacement), it becomes more evident that being leader with an innovative flair in many situations can be more valued than an efficient project manager that gets the (wrong) job done. Books have never rallied people together (to paraphrase Kotter and Cohen (2014)), rather, as creativity is a precursor to innovation, one can argue that the gathering people together in social, creative processes is essential for the future of leadership in project innovation. In this book you will read about a wide variety of contributions that revolve around innovation, leadership and project management in various stages and forms. The contributions in this book are varied in terms of the practical area and the types of contribution. Nevertheless, they provide a broad vignette of the ongoing research on innovation and project management in Denmark as of writing. As a literature review on the education of the project management field, Goodall and Leimbach find implications for practice of how to learn, apply and reflect on project management, especially when the field of project management continuously acknowledges the need for leaders and coping with complexity. In his meta-discussion of project management practices, Christiansen presents several dilemmas and assumptions about project management and innovation that directly contradicts the history of how the most innovative solutions in the 2000s have been developed. Taking a more critical approach to large IT projects, Fleron and Hansen identify a new type of IT mega projects that by their very nature are very difficult to

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evaluate. As result, the authors call for more research on how to innovate the approaches of evaluation of that type of projects, specifically. In the last chapters of the book we present findings on new methods and approaches for innovation. Vinter and Carstensen present aspects that one needs to remember when acting as a leader of change management. The result is that a plan for change management identified from the research literature that, similarly to best practices in project management, also needs to be accounted for. Brink presents the results of how to accelerate innovation in the beginning of an interorganizational collaboration project in the Danish Energy sector by combining business model canvas with diverse types of organizations and personalities. Pries-Heje and Johansen show an innovative way to prioritize the project portfolio of an organization through a tool that assesses value vs priority of the many projects that an organization often will initiate. Here towards the end we want to thank the Danish Project Management Association (Dansk Projektledelse) and Jesper Garde Schreiner for the collaboration. Without the backing, willingness and professional management this book would never had happened. We also want to thank the Otto Mønsted Foundation (Otto Mønsteds Fond). Without their aid we could not have scaled up the structure, content and international representation of the conference at the Danish Project Management Symposium. Magnus Rotvit Perlt Hansen & Jan Pries-Heje REFERENCES Amabile, T.M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1154-1184. Amabile, T.M. & Pratt, M.G. (2016). The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: Making progress, making meaning. Research in Organizational Behavior, 36, 157-183. Brown, T. (2009). Change by Design: How Design Thinking Can Transform Organizations and Inspire Innovation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Danmarks Statistik (2019). Innovation og forskning 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/Publikationer/VisPub?cid=20757

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Kim, G., Debois, P., Willis, J., Humble, J., & Allspaw, J. (2016). The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations. Portland: IT Revolution Press. Kotter, J.P. & Cohen, D. (2014). Change Leadership: The Kotter Collection. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. Putta, A., Paasivaara, M., & Lassenius, C. (2018). Benefits and challenges of adopting the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): Preliminary results from a multivocal literature review. In M. Kuhrmann et al (eds.), Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 11271 (pp. 334-351). Cham: Springer. Aarhus Universitet (2016). Undersøgelse af strategiarbejdet i danske virksomheder 2016. Strategirapport. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from http://www.e-pages.dk/aarhusuniversitet/1328/ Ward, T.B. (2004). Cognition, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 19(2), 173-188. Woodman, R.W., Sawyer, J.E., & Griffin, R.W. (2011). Toward a theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Management Review, 18(2), 293-321.

C OL L A BOR AT I V E PRO JEC T BUSIN E S S MODE L IN NOVAT IO N FOR HORI ZO N TA L L E A DE RSHIP IN PRO JEC T S: QUA L I TAT I V E E MPIRIC A L RE SE A RC H IN T HE OF F SHORE W IN D E NE RGY EC O S Y S T E M To v e B r i n k COL L ABOR AT I V E PRO JEC T BUSINE S S MODEL INNOVAT ION FOR HORIZON TAL L E ADERSHIP IN PRO JEC T S

A B S T R AC T The research sheds light on how collaborative project Business Model Innovation (BMI) can enable innovation for more energy production with less costs within offshore wind park energy ecosystems. The empirical qualitative research took place from September 2017 to June 2018 in a Baltic Sea port. The findings highlight the essentials of successful collaborative project BMI in the research context. The findings are summarized and illustrated in the model called “Project FrontEco BMI”. The approach shown in the model created value through higher reliability and faster flow through the port with less investments required. The contribution shed light on the hitherto black box of ecosystem innovation to contain BMI on overall project level enabled by heterogeneous individual and organisational preferred behaviours and horizontal knowledge creation in project execution. 1. I N T RO DU C T I O N Ecosystems represent relatively new organisational forms often connected through project-based work. Brady and Hobday (2012: 277) stress organisational project-based work to enable innovation in organisations, as follows: “In theory, temporary organizations (e.g., projects) can be central to innovation, allowing firms to conduct ‘out of the ordinary’ experimental activities”. A key challenge for organisations is to reap the innovation from these ‘out of the ordinary experimental activities.’ This challenge is enhanced for ecosystems with many different participating organisations in their project-based ecosystem work.

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In innovation theory, the notion of ‘ecosystems’ describes the range of “value creating interactions and relationships between sets of interconnected organizations” (Autio and Thomas, 2014). The concept calls for fresh ways of thinking about specialization, co-evolution and co-creation of value (Adner and Kapoor, 2010). Autio and Thomas (2014: 205) defines an ecosystem as “a network of interconnected organizations, connected to a firm or a platform, that incorporates both production and use side participants, and also creates and appropriates new value through innovation”. It means that the ecosystem has to be connected to ‘a firm or a joint platform’. However, all ecosystems are not connected to a firm or a joint platform. The challenge is thus enhanced for these ecosystems to reap the innovation from ‘out of the ordinary experimental activities.’ An empirical context to understand the ecosystems not connected to a firm or a joint platform is provided by the offshore wind park energy sector. Offshore wind parks both contain the production side, which involves the construction and production of equipment on land and installation offshore and long-term energy production at Sea, and the user side, which involves competitive pricing of available renewable energy for end users in society wherever they are situated. According to Gustafsson and Autio (2011), the need for innovation to provide the competitive pricing of energy can cause the evolution of interconnected actors in the network towards new states, rather than the optimization of the output potential of the network configuration. The primary aim of offshore wind park ecosystems is increased production of energy with less cost over the lifetime of offshore wind parks. There is no focal firm in the offshore wind park ecosystem due to dispersed distribution of actors. Many enterprises in the offshore wind park ecosystem work and transfer personnel and equipment through nearby ports. This makes empirical research on collaborative project Business Model Innovation (BMI) within ports interesting for insights into ecosystem innovation. Port authorities traditionally perceive themselves as regulators and not as facilitators for collaborative innovation (Hollen, 2015). However, the role of ports is changing. Since the turn of the century, it has become increasingly acknowledged that ports consist of spatial sites of interwoven supply chains with independent yet interdependent organisations operating in the port space (de Langen & Haezendonck, 2012) that can benefit from inter-organisational networking (De Martino & Morvillo, 2008). This highlights a need for extended collaborative project BMI in port ecosystem contexts. It stands in stark contrast to the hostility often detected between enterprises working in port spaces (De Martino & Mor-

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villo, 2008). The research question in this chapter is thus posed: “How can collaborative project BMI enable innovation for more energy production with fewer costs within offshore wind park ecosystems?” This research question can make practical contributions to offshore wind park ecosystem for sustainability of renewal energy in society, and theoretical contributions by understanding the enhanced challenge for ecosystems that reap the innovation from ‘out of the ordinary experimental activities’ for value creation in society in general. The research is financed by the innovation network BrandBase and the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science in Agency for Institutions and Educational Grants. Neither of the parties have influenced the research conducted and the book chapter written. The outline of the chapter will first reveal the offshore/nearshore wind park and port contexts to set the scene for research. Next the literature review will show the existing knowledge. Then, the research design is explained. The findings are shown and illustrated in a summarized model for overview, insight and understanding of the answer to the research question. Finally, the discussion and conclusion end the chapter. 2. O F F S H O RE W I N D PA RK A N D P O R T C O N T E X T Offshore wind parks are ecosystems situated in the Sea. Many stakeholders from various countries participate in construction, production of parts, installation, commissioning, Operation and Maintenance (O&M) and decommissioning of an offshore wind park. The context of offshore wind parks and ports are interwoven as many actors and wind park components within offshore wind parks pass through the port. The port is a flow corridor for projects to be conducted from production on land to sea installation and O&M activities and vice versa. At the end of 2018, 92 offshore wind farms have been built with a total capacity of 18,499 MW and a cross total of 4,543 wind grid-connected turbines situated in 11 European countries (EWEA, 2019). Top 5 European countries represent 98% of all capacity connected. The largest wind park owner/developer is Ørsted with 17% of installed capacity, followed by E.ON with 11%, Global Infrastructure Partners with 9% and Equinor and Macquarie Capital with 7% each and Vattenfall with 5% MW. It shows that large wind park owners are not, in fact, dominating the offshore wind market. The market share of wind turbine manufacturers

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(Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are, respectively, Siemens Gamesa with 62% MW of total installed capacity, MHI Vestas with 33%, GE Renewable Energy with 5% MW (EWEA, 2019). The OEMs are thus much more dominant. However, many other components and services are required, which make important contributions through the lifetime of offshore wind parks (EWEA, 2019). It means that many different actors are necessary in the entire ecosystem and that no dominant firm is spanning the ecosystem. Offshore wind parks are under pressure to reduce Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) for creating a competitive alternative energy source (Crown Estate, 2012). Definitions of LCoE vary, but in brief, “LCoE is the sum of the discounted lifetime generation costs (€) divided by the sum of discounted lifetime electricity output (MWh)” (Crown Estate, 2012). Offshore wind energy is currently more costly than conventional sources of energy – as measured by LCoE (WEC, 2019). Extended efforts are needed to reach the cost target and hereby eliminate the need for governmental subsidies. Due to the calculation of LCoE, the measure can be reduced either by increasing the production of MWhs from the wind park and/or by reducing the costs. Many different participants in many different projects are thus contributing to the reduction of LCoE. It means that many participants make separate decisions with impact on LCoE (Brink, Madsen and Lutz, 2015). Ports are transport corridors for equipment coming from land- and/or sea transportation shipped from other production facilities/ports in shorter/longer distances from the port. All actors (except air transport) within the offshore wind/near shore wind energy ecosystem operate in ports. Ports add value to offshore wind parks via the spaces e.g. for logistics, production, mounting, operation- and maintenance activities conducted in the port. Hence, ecosystem project collaboration opportunities are ripe for research to be conducted. 3. L I T E R AT U RE RE V I E W Relevant literature streams to answer the research question on how collaborative project BMI can enable innovation for more energy production with less costs within offshore wind park ecosystems, are inherently cross-disciplinary and situated within the essential understanding of ecosystems and collaborative value in complex project context, Business Model Innovation (BMI) and the impact from collaborative heterogeneous preferred behaviour in the ecosystem. Each literature stream will be reviewed to understand the respective current literature con-

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tribution to answer the research question and the suggestions revealed for research to contribute to new knowledge creation. 3.1 E c o s y s t e m s an d v alu e in c o m p le x p r oje c t s The ecosystem notion extends the concept of the value chain to that of a system that includes any organisation that contributes to the shared offerings (Autio and Thomas, 2014). Shared value is defined by Porter and Kramer (2011: 6) as “policies and operating practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates”. It is underpinned by Porter and Kramer (2011: 6) that “value is defined as benefits relative to costs, not just benefits alone”. This is in a more operational approach extended by Osterwalder & Pigneur (2010: 22) in the notion of value propositions to solve customer problems or to satisfy customer needs and more specific consists of “a selected bundle of products and/or services that caters to the requirements of a specific customer segment”. These definitions of value and shared value take their point of departure in individual organisations and yet reach out to create value for other individuals/organisations in the environment. In the ecosystem context, value is by definition of the ecosystem notion created in a shared context among the participating organisations. When no focal firm is spanning the ecosystem there will be a loosely coupled organisation in the innovation ecosystems with no clear governance structure present. This can result in only incremental innovations between a limited number of organisations and sub-optimization of value creation (Autio and Thomas, 2014). However, by developing a deeper understanding of the characteristics of their own ecosystem dynamics over time, ecosystem actors can create the position and the direction of their organisations to pursue the overall aim of value creation within the ecosystem (Malerba and Adams, 2014). Focus on open dialogue and organisational knowledge creation can thus enable innovation initiatives to pursue the overall aim of the ecosystem. Steiber and Alänge (2015) emphasize the need to strengthen heterogeneous capacities of both radically new innovations and development of the value generation from existing processes, products and services. This forms an “organisational-improvement trajectory” (Steiber and Alänge, 2015: 12), which is claimed to exist on all organisational levels. In this trajectory, organisational innovations are diffused between enterprises and reinvented. In particular, “less focus on for-

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mal processes”, “employee empowerment”, “self-organization” and the ability to “continually innovate” are stressed as necessary antecedents to enable innovation in ecosystems (Steiber and Alänge, 2015). This highlights heterogeneity as needed in both individual- organisational initiatives to enable innovation. Complex project activities are dependent on different actors long-term. In project management theory, this is noted as Complex Product Systems (CoPS) and defined as “high-value, capital goods systems, networks and infrastructural components, designed and produced by firms as one-offs or in small tailored batches to meet the requirements of large businesses or government customers” (Brady & Hobday, 2012: 282). In the offshore wind park context, there is relatively small batches of wind turbines in offshore wind parks with different water depths, seabeds, water flows, cabling and wind conditions. The CoPS context makes offshore wind park ecosystems different from the traditional lifecycle approach to innovation (Abernathy & Utterback, 1988). Instead CoPS projects remains in the early fluid phase and essentially continue with new development over their lifetime. Literature has highlighted a need for knowledge “in excess of what they need for what they make” and “specialized” and “complementary” knowledge in the CoPS business network context (Brusoni, Prencipe and Pavitt, 2001). Accumulation of knowledge creation from one project to the next project has only been limited researched on the ecosystem level in complex projects (Killen and Drouin, 2017; Brady and Hobday, 2012). This means that the creation of excess knowledge for accumulation within overall cross-organisational projects in ecosystems are underdeveloped. A research contribution can thus be made through ecosystem research in the CoPS context to enable innovation. In summary, the antecedents for ecosystems to enable innovation stems from organising value creation among participating organisations and the active involvement of the heterogenous organisations in the ecosystem to contribute to innovation and value creation. 3. 2 Bu s in e s s M o d e l Inn o v a t io n (BM I) Hitherto research on BMI has been dispersed. Therefore, various systematic reviews covering the development of BMI literature have been conducted during the last decade (e.g. Foss & Saebi, 2017; Schneider and Spieth, 2013). The reviews reveal that research following BMI processes is scarce and leads to a black box perception so far on BMI (Khanagha et al., 2014). There is a need for more empir-

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ical research to shed light on BMI processes – especially on the interorganisational level of project BMI activities within ecosystems. The notion of business models is, amongst others, elaborated in the intuitive design-based approach developed by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010: 16 ff.) called “Business Model Canvas” (BMC). The BMC contains 7 basic elements as follows: • Customer segments – the customers the organisation serves • Customer relations – the relations established and maintained towards customers • Channels – communication, distribution and sales channels towards customers • Value proposition – seeks to solve customer problems and satisfy customer needs • Key activities – activities to provide the value proposition • Key resources – assets required to provide the value proposition required • Key partners – resources required outside the firm to provide the value proposition. The value proposition is the essential element both according to customers and to customer relations and channels required to serve the customers and according to activities, assets and partners required outside the firm to deliver the value proposition to customers. The model is made for individual organisations but can also potentially be used on the overall project level between organisations in ecosystems. Research conducted on the ecosystem level is, however, limited. The BMC notion acknowledges the importance of value creation, which also is essential to managing projects (Brady and Hobday, 2012). The BMC tool can then be used to identify the overall value of the project for the ecosystem participants. Additionally, the BMC notion acknowledges the importance of outside partners, which is important for the individual organisation to focus on in ecosystems. This can also be used on the ecosystem level to identify further required partners to participate in the ecosystem. All the elements in the BMC can thus be used on ecosystem level. The BMC notion can be used to enable innovation through change of the business model elements and the connection between them. The notion of innovation must then be reviewed to support the underlying assumptions contained for innovation to be created.

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The notion of innovation is elaborated by Amabile et al. (1996) as follows: “Innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization. In this view, creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the first is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the second”. (Amabile et al. (1996: 1154-1155). This means the use of new ideas for organisational knowledge creation is required to execute and control collective implementation efforts successfully. The approach requires a combination of organisational behaviours and cultures to develop new ideas and create knowledge for people to support idea generation, the aim of reaching goals, trustful engagement, and the use of details to control resources for ultimate economic benefit and successful innovation (Brink, 2016). This means that cross-disciplinary approaches to organisational behaviour are essential in order to be able to pursue innovation in ecosystems. In summary the present black box of BMI is highlighted for research to further contribute. Additionally, the underlying elements for BMI using BMC to structure/design the important elements for change are explained in combination with the underlying assumptions of the innovation notion. Hereby the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches for organisational innovation to support the change in BMC to result in BMI through focal attention on the overall project value proposition is suggested. 3. 3 H e t e r oge n e o u s b e ha v io ur an d o r g ani s a t io na l c ul t ur a l a p p r o a c h e s Heterogeneous behaviour can be observed on different levels in an organisation, respectively preferred individual behaviour/team behaviour (Jung, 1968; Jacoby, 1973) and organisational behaviour (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). The underlying assumption about creativity and innovation behaviour is found in the set of psychological attitudes guiding the preferred behaviour of employees in an organisation. This is related to Jung’s (1959) notion of archetypes of personalities, which was elaborated by Jacoby (1973) and later by Csikszentmihaly (1997) in terms of preferences for creativity and the ability to obtain flow in execution. Jung (1959) highlighted three continuums regarding individual behaviour namely: introversion versus extroversion on how people react to inner and outer experiences, thinking versus feeling on how individuals make decisions and sensation versus intuition on how individuals take in and process information. This provides an intuitive simplicity of four preferred behaviours already noted by the Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 370 BC). Psychological researchers have

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provided new insight and understanding regarding this intuitive phenomenon identified (Jung, 1923; Jacoby, 1973; Csikszentmihaly, 1997; Mueller et al., 2012). The preferred behaviours noted today focus respectively on details & procedures, focus on people & caring, focus on ideas & involvement, and focus on goals & competition. Creative people and creative teams were in Jung’s (1959) suggestion able to integrate these opposing dichotomies of preferred behaviour for increased creativity to unfold in successful innovation. Csikszentmihaly (1997, 2002) supports Jung’s (1959) suggestion through the description of creative innovation execution as “flow”. Csikszentmihaly (1997: 110) draws on nearly one hundred interviews with creative people working in many fields to describe ‘flow’ as: “Rather it often involved painful, risky, difficult activities that stretched the person’s capacity and involved an element of novelty and discovery. This optimal experience is what I have called flow, because many of the respondents described the feeling when things were going well as an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness”. Csikszentmihaly (1997) conducted research on very different activities (e.g., with athletes, artists, scientists and working people describing their most rewarding experiences). The uncertainty that is part of ‘novelty and discovery’ does play an important role for creating the flow of creativity. Csikszentmihaly (1997: 111-113) revealed patterns of not worrying about failure and the issue of activities becoming autotelic, which means to provide participants with a stronger self-concept and ability to cope with uncertainty. Uncertainty and a degree of chaos are thus often antecedents for flow to enable innovation. Different behaviours of agents provide a base for the ability to cope with uncertainty. Therefore, alternative approaches to concrete specific challenges support ‘flow’ and ‘effortless execution’. The research of Csikszentmihaly (1997, 2002), Jacobi (1973) and Jung (1968) and the literature review on the personaland the collective behaviour by Hauke (2006) demonstrate that the more composite integrated interplay of different preferred behaviours of individuals and teams, the more creativity unfolds to enable innovation. The behavioural interplay of dichotomies of preferred behaviours are hereby important antecedents for innovation. In cultural literature streams Cameron and Quinn (2011) developed the competing culture values framework, which the authors emphasize to have “high congruence with well-known and well-accepted categorial schemes that organise the way people think, their values and assumptions” (Cameron and Quinn, 2011: 37) e.g. ‘Jung (1923)’. Cameron and Quinn’s (2011) framework has two underlying

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continuums respectively internal focus versus external focus and stability (reasonings are based on thinking) versus flexibility (reasonings are based on feelings) This provides four cultures listed as cultural extensions to the four preferred individual behaviours listed by Jung (1923) and called respectively “hierarchy controlling”-, “clan collaboration”-, “adhocracy creation”- and “market compe­ tition”-cultures (Cameron and Quinn, 2011: 41-51). The dichotomies are perceived as opposite and competing but also overlapping in the organisation with cultural dominated orientation where many managers and employees participate with the same preferred behaviours and ‘white spaces’ where non-employees are present with missed opportunities as a result. Different business models typically require different organisational cultures – competing values dependent on the business model and the value proposition aimed for in the organisation (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). In summary, the literature within behavioural context emphasize heterogeneous individual preferred behaviours and heterogeneous organisational cultural behaviours to enable innovation through horizontal knowledge creation. It is suggested that the interorganisational ecosystem projects require horizontal organisational leadership in knowledge creation with many complex, dependent projects, yet with interdependent organisations collaborating. 3.4 S um m ar y o f p r e v io u s r e s e ar c h The hitherto knowledge to answer the research question of how collaborative project BMI can enable innovation for more energy production with fewer costs within offshore wind park ecosystems reveals respectively that; innovation stems from organising of value creation among participating organisations; active involvement of heterogenous organisations are necessary and creation of excess knowledge are necessary. Additionally, a present black box of BMI is highlighted for research to further contribute. The use of BMC to structure/design the important elements with focal attention on the overall project value proposition is suggested to enable innovation. Finally, an antecedent for ecosystems to enable innovation is the use of heterogeneous preferred behaviour on all levels in the organisation and across the ecosystem for horizontal leadership in knowledge creation to enable innovation. The literature review thus sheds light on two important issues in order to enable innovation in ecosystems highlighted several times in the different literature streams:

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• Heterogeneous antecedents for collaborative value creation in the ecosystem. • Project BMI to be developed on the overall project ecosystem level. Enhanced empirical research is needed to show the actual impact of these issues and hereby contribute to existing knowledge. Next the research design is explained. 4. R E S E A RC H DE S I G N Research has hitherto not been conducted in the nearshore/offshore wind park and port context of ecosystems. It means that the empirical research field is underdeveloped and call for a qualitative research approach to understand the important phenomena (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt, Graebner and Sonenschein, 2016; Yin, 2018; Miles, Huberman and Saldana, 2014). The research approach is based on interpretation of “the information as it is being collected and to know immediately if several sources of information contradict one another and lead to the need for additional evidence”. It means to make inferences “based on convergent evidence” (Yin, 2018: 86). The research team of two senior researchers and a student assistant conducted the research through data collection, transcriptions and analyses. A discussion consequently unfolded during the triangulation of the phenomena studied. Only one researcher continued the analysis used in this book chapter. This chapter reports from an empirical, interpretative, qualitative case study conducted from September 2017 to June 2018 in a port close to near-shore wind park sites in the Baltic Sea. The research was designed as participatory action learning (McIntyre, 2008), which consequently reveals the important elements needed for enabling innovation. The research started with individual interviews with the near-shore park owner, two main logistic business actors respectively operating on land and on sea and the nearby port. These individual research meetings lasted around one day each and were conducted before the first collaborative action learning network meeting. At least two managers from each organisation participated in the research. Table 1 on the next page shows an overview of the research participants.

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ROLE

ENTERPRISE INFORMATION (EU DEFINITION ON SIZE OF ENTERPRISE)

Port

Enterprise – owned by the Municipal Community with compliance to the Port Law of the country Medium size enterprise Two managers on offshore wind & port activities participating

Nearshore wind park owner

Enterprise – owned privately Medium size enterprise Two managers on offshore wind commercial & technical issues

Logistic partner at sea

Enterprise – owned privately Larger size enterprise Two managers on offshore wind business development & port activities

Logistic partner at land

Enterprise – owned privately Larger size enterprise Two managers on offshore wind business development & port activities

Ta b l e 1. O v e r v i e w o f t h e p a r t i c i p a n t s i n t h e r e s e a r c h .

Table 1 shows the anonymous research participants with various differing levels of experience. The content in the research process was developed by the research participants based on their own organisational approaches and the joint BMI near shore project. Hereby, the joint interaction processes could be revealed through the research process, in short listed in Table 2. RESEARCH PROJECT PHASES

CONTENT

0. phase

Initial individual meetings with the enterprises in September-October 2017

1. phase

First network meeting in end October 2017

2. phase

Second network meeting in start of March 2018

3. phase

Third network meeting in end May 2018

Ta b l e 2. O v e r v i e w o f t h e r e s e a r c h p r o c e s s .

Table 2 shows the four phases of the research process; the initial individual meeting with each enterprise participating with two managers, and the three network meetings where the two managers continued their participation in the joint discussions.

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In the individual interviews with each enterprise, the discussion focused on four cross-disciplinary themes: ‘the organization’s’ ability to pursue BMI by revealing individual- and organisational behaviours through Insights® personality test of participants (Jung, 1968; Jacoby, 1973; Benton, Schurink and Desson, 2008). The participants’ preferred behaviour was revealed through a discussion about the competing values contained in the organisational cultures (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). Next the overall ‘BMI’ for the near-shore wind park projects were revealed through the design approach of business model generation (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). Then ‘necessary joint strategic projects’ in the nearshore ecosystem was highlighted to prepare for the later joint discussions on the first network meeting. The value in terms of ‘economic return on investment’ can be revealed through the overall cash flow impact from the near-shore wind park projects (Koller, Goedhardt and Wessels, 2010). Hereby an understanding of the impact of the economic terms from collaborative innovation in the ecosystem of near-shore wind parks are outlined. A summary of the material developed in the individual meetings was presented by the enterprises at the first joint network meeting. This created thorough antecedent insight into how an open action learning approach could enable innovation during the three network meetings. All meetings lasted around a full day. On the first network meeting it was decided to select the joint nearshore wind park project for physical simulation with 3D printed wind turbine elements, ships, cranes etc. in a model of the participating port for joint elaboration of BMI. In the second network meeting the simulation was conducted by the research participants and thorough discussions unfolded. In the third network meeting a follow up on the developed concepts was done with specific focus on the investments required in the port and a presentation of the concept was made to a wind turbine producer (OEM) for comments. In phase 0 the antecedents of organisational behaviour and organisational culture were revealed through the acknowledged personal profile test (Benton, Schurink and Desson, 2008), which fit in to research on organisational culture (Cameron and Quinn, 2011: 37). The dimensions in the personal, preferred behaviour was focused on the ambidextrous dimensions of: • Introversion contra extroversion: how people respond to influences, respectively through an internal contra an external process.

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• Thinking contra feeling: how people make decisions, respectively based on thinking contra feeling. From these personal insights on one’s own preferred behaviour the organisational behaviour was revealed through the competing ambidextrous dimensions of organisational culture: • Internal contra external: respectively organisational integration contra differentiation. • Stable contra flexible: respectively organisational control contra discretion. An overview on the data collection is given in Table 3, which shows personal individual preferred behaviours in all four combinations of introversion contra extroversion and thinking contra feeling (Jung, 1968; Jacoby, 1973). This led to different individual preferred behaviours with focus on: • • • •

Details People Ideas Goals.

The distribution of these individual foci is shown in Table 3. Half of the participants had an ‘extrovert thinking’ profile, which showed a focus on ‘goals’. The ‘introvert thinking’ profiles were second most present with a focus on ‘details’. It meant that the research participants mostly emphasized focus on overall goals and the detailed grounding of these goals. The organisational behaviours were also distributed along all four cultures, which can span across the terms noted as (Cameron and Quinn, 2011:53): • • • •

Hierarchy – with focus on control Clan – with focus on human development Adhocracy – with focus on innovativeness Market – with focus on customers.

The distribution of these organisational focusses is shown in Table 3. Three orga-

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nisational cultures were situated in ‘hierarchy’ and ‘market’ and two in ‘clan’ and ‘adhocracy’. PERSONALITY TYPES

DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERISTICS

Introvert thinking Labelled: ‘observer’

Focus on details regarding tasks

Hierarchy Control and efficiency with capable processes to achieve effectiveness

Introvert feeling Labelled: ‘supporter’

Focus on people and their wellbeing

Clan Human development and participation to achieve a nice community

Extrovert feeling Labelled: ‘inspirer’

Focus on new ideas involving people

Adhocracy and envisioning to achieve participation and creativity

Extrovert thinking Labelled ‘director’

Focus on goals and competitive actions

Market and aggressive competition to achieve efficiency

INDIVIDUAL PROFILES - NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS

DESCRIPTION OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

ORGANISATIONAL PROFILES - CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Ta b l e 3 . O v e r v i e w o n p e r s o n a l p r o f i l e s a n d o r g a n i s a t i o n a l c u l t u r e s .

Table 3 shows a diverse and heterogeneous individual and organisational team participating in the action learning research for collaborative BMI on joint project business network level. However, the team was dominated by ‘focus on goals and competitive actions’ and framed by ‘market’ and ‘hierarchy’ organisational cultures. Potentially, this can limit long-term innovation initiatives as short-term customer orientation seems to be more dominant and grounded in details and hierarchical processes, which can hinder innovation. However, as is shown in the findings from the collaborative BMI process at ecosystem, level this was over-

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come as the participants with other individual focuses had room to come into the discussions with their argumentation. The participants acknowledge the importance of all the heterogeneous preferred behaviours to be important antecedents for the insight into and understanding of value creation at the project business network level. The interviews/meetings were transcribed and analysed in relation to the literature review conducted. Next the findings are revealed. 5. F I N DI N G S The Research question on how to enable collaborative project BMI innovation for more energy production with fewer costs within offshore wind park ecosystems will be analysed according to the suggestions made in the literature review of: • Heterogeneous antecedents for collaborative value creation in the ecosystem • Project BMI to be developed on the overall project ecosystem level. The analyses will highlight quotes and processes on both these issues to provide a more thorough answer on the research question posed. The summary combines and develops a model to illustrate the key findings. First, the analysis of the project BMI to be developed on the overall project ecosystem level will be revealed, then analyses of the heterogeneous antecedents for collaborative value creation in the ecosystem will be conducted. 5.1 P r oj e c t BM I t o b e d e v e l o p e d o n t h e o v e r a ll p r oj e c t e c o s y s t e m le v e l The project BMI was developed from the business model generation canvas explained earlier – the illustration of the BMC is shown in Figure 1 on page 32. The BMI potential was revealed by all participants in the individual meetings through their insight and understanding of the value proposition on the project ecosystem level as they perceived it through their own lenses. A main overlapping issue was mentioned as the need for reduction of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) as noted earlier. The research participants explained it as shown in the following quotes:

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N4: “We know that subsidies do not provide a sustainable wind business for us. If we have subsidies we are too dependent on ‘political support’, which often can change”. N2: “We need to build the nearshore wind parks on par with other energy sources to support sustainability in society and to increase the number of investors, who want to provide funding for these projects”.

Additionally, four other issues were also frequently and independently stressed as listed from 1) to 4) and were finally related to reduction of LCoE: 1. “Safe handling of wind turbine elements”, which meant to secure the flow from production to installation and Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of the wind turbine for material, equipment and people – without reworks and accidents hurting people and destroying materials and equipment. 2. “No extra use of time spent waiting for other activities in the wind turbine flow in the Port”, which meant that no time is wasted on the way for wind turbine to produce energy in the wind parks in the end. 3. “No indirect costs experienced by communities and other enterprises”, which meant reduction of incurred cost for other stakeholders. 4. “Compliance with national laws and regulations”, which meant legal sustainability for renewable energy production. The participants thus in summarization highlighted that the valuable proposition at the project ecosystem level was the reduction of LCoE through two overall pursued aims: • Earlier and more steady utilization of the wind source for energy production – increasing performance of MWh production. • No extra costs for rework, claims, compensations and waiting – reduction of incurred costs. The research participants explained their approach as shown in the following quotes: N3: “The flow of components through the port can be considerable improved. In the moment engineers are deciding too much on the logistic flow – and they do not have the knowledge and experience we have. It can be done much faster.”

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N4: “Alternative logistic solutions could be used, which limit damages of components with less re-work required in the port and at the wind farm site.”

The key activities where typically highlighted through the participants own lenses as: • Logistic activities on land (logistic partner Land). • Logistic activities on the Sea (logistic partner Sea). • Selling Energy to end-user, business to businesses and/or private users (wind park Owner). • Renting port spaces out (port). However, often the participants, due to their own lenses and own knowledge of key activities, ran into challenges of understanding what they came to call “interfaces” and understood as the points of transfer between business partner organisations, e.g. logistic processes between Land and Sea and vice versa, transfer of wind turbines to the wind park owner, and transfer of the wind turbines through the port, often denoted as “flow” by the participants. Therefore, issues of ‘interfaces’ and ‘flows’ were often discussed during the network meetings for more proper key activities for solutions to enhance value creation. The research participants highlighted the issue the following way: N2: “The interfaces, where components are transferred from one port actor to another actor, is very important to take care of. Often accidents happen here. How to deal with this?” N3: “It is important to have safe handling in the interfaces both for people to avoid accidences and for components not to be damaged.” N4: “There is a need to share risk in the interfaces. It means to take responsibility for the total flow through the port.” N1: “There is a need to collaborate on solutions to reduce risk and uncertainty in the activities done in the interfaces.”

The focus on key resources was typically found in the following different knowledge domains:

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• • • •

IT data system collection and data mining. Availability of financial resources. Project management, which represent both explicit and tacit key resources. Port spaces and equipment.

Here, coherence was detected during research on the content of key resources, however, again with a focus on the key resources typically owned by the different participating organisations. However, discussions often unfolded on organising key resources to increase the overall value creation with departure from own lenses and experiences. The research participants explained the approach as shown in the following quotes: N4: “We have experience in tracking events in the flow of components in the port. It means that repair can be done fast and immediately upon the damaging incidence”. N2: “Creation of a professional project management knowledge base with departure in the entire flow will be important for improvement of both flow and interfaces in the port.”

Customer relationships and channels were often perceived in relation to how the actors can work to send an invoice. However, during the discussions the participants expressed the greater potential for project managers to understand the needs of the customers’ customer and partners, because their needs in the end of the day were essential for long-term competitive advantage. The participants agreed that: N4: “The market is large enough for all of us, when offshore wind energy can compete with traditional energy sources.”

Therefore, an enhanced approach was needed on the understanding of the different customers present in the ecosystem involving different organisations relating to different end-users. Customers in the end-user business-to-business private contexts were addressed by the wind park owner as knowledge about these customers were primarily present in the wind park owner organisation. Fruitful discussions between the research participants could then unfold on the entire value

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creation in the ecosystem of renewable wind energy production. The participants contributed with their knowledge to the collaborative understanding of the value proposition and necessary key activities and key resources. The research participants discussed this with open suggestions, relating to the end-investor in nearshore wind and end-users (which also could be investors): N1: “Who will be interested in the nearshore wind park for investment and use of the MWh’s produced?”

Key partners were not really seen as important; however, legislative and IT areas were emphasized as data collection for improvement of ‘flows’ and ‘interfaces’ and use or resources were stressed. Here key partners in the future could be important for collaboration with organisations with competences in legal and IT areas – maybe actually not present in the present offshore wind ecosystem. The research participants highlighted their perception of new future partners in the following quotes: N3: “IT-tools can help us considerably both in relation to interfaces and flow.” N1: “There will be some kind of legal issue, which has to be resolved between actors in the port. The solution has to be flexible and easy to relate to.”

Next, the process on the network meetings will be analysed. 5. 2 H e t e r oge n e o u s an t e c e d e n t s f o r c o lla b o r a t i v e v alu e c r e a t i o n in t h e e c o s y s t e m Lively debates between participants took place at all three network meetings. This provided rich and interesting data for the analyses. In the start of the first joint network meeting there were many questions on logistic, technical and maritime ‘details’ and antecedents for the nearshore wind park project to be clarified. This led next to questions about ‘goals’ for the nearshore project with discussions of the impact on ‘people’ and organisations for new ‘ideas’ to emerge continuously. Already in the first individual meeting the ‘extrovert-feeling’-person with focus on ‘ideas’ suggested the port as ‘Hub-port’ (the overall main port for offshore wind park operation activities) in the Baltic Sea. Nobody else had previously seen this opportunity for the port to be elaborated as a realistic opportunity. The sug-

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gestion was discussed in length and explorative processes went on through all three network meetings. First, exploration of which goals should be set for an offshore hub-port in the Baltic Sea were discussed. The research participants discussed what requirements should be framed for a Baltic Sea wind hub: How many simultaneous wind projects to handle in the port?

Then exploitation continued to what impact this would have on the offshore wind business network value creation – the actual details and processes, e.g. that very large investments were needed in the port. Then exploration of further ideas on the hub-port concept were elaborated – the actual needs of the participants and the impact on people and organisations in the port and the entire ecosystem. An ongoing debate unfolded on exploration of the new ideas and which goals should be met for these ideas, and what exploitation of the impact on detailed tasks and people/organisations were needed to actually attain success. The participating enterprises agreed that: N3: “The hinterland of the port is important. However, if capabilities of the hinterland of the port is lacking then hinterland enterprises from existing efficient and effective ports need to be used for development in new ports.”

These discussions of combining exploration and exploitation continued for further value creation and, in the end of the network meeting two, resulted in a suggestion with the potential to halve the original estimate for investments in the port in order to become a hub-port for the Baltic Sea. The participants were able to work more thoroughly with the ideas resulting in fewer investments, faster and less risky processes in a hub-port-function as the research process progressed. These discussions by antecedent heterogeneous participants frontloaded innovation and created organisational knowledge leading to considerable value creation through new port project approaches on the offshore ecosystem level. 5. 3 S um m ar y o f t h e f in ding s Figure 1 provides a graphical illustration of the essential issues revealed in the re-

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search regarding the need for heterogeneous antecedents for collaborative project BMI in ecosystems to emerge through frontloading of innovation and knowledge creation.

F i g u r e 1. S u m m a r y o f c o l l a b o r a t i v e p r o j e c t b u s i n e s s m o d e l i n n o v a t i o n: ‘ P r o j e c t F r o n t E c o B M I ’.

Figure 1 summarises the overall beneficial impact of collaboration on ecosystem level to frontload project business model innovation and knowledge creation on the overall ecosystem level to support further innovation in subsequent ecosystem projects. One of the research participants framed it like so: N1: “This process opens new ways to understand value creation in offshore wind park projects. This is interesting for us and it will get even more interesting when we can use the insight and understanding in the specific subsequent projects.”

The collaborative project BMI approach thus provided a joint collaborative insight into and understanding of what lies beyond the participants’ own organisa-

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tion and hereby resulted in being able to take more robust and sustainable initiatives by the individual organisations. The research question is answered through the summation in Figure 1, which highlights the necessity of collaborative frontloading of BMI and knowledge creation across ecosystem organisations with antecedent heterogeneous preferred individual and organisational behaviours to enable innovation. 6 . DIS C U S S I O N A N D C O N C L U S I O N S The research of this study sheds light on the experienced black box on how collaborative project BMI can enable innovation for more energy production with fewer costs within offshore wind park ecosystems. The empirical qualitative research took place from September 2017 to June 2018 with 4 enterprises in an initial 1-day meeting of data collection and three network meetings lasting 1-day each within the nearshore wind park energy ecosystem in the Baltic Sea. The findings are summarized in a model called ‘Project FrontEco BMI’, which represents an illustration of the underlying dynamic processes that unfolded during the research project. Two issues were important for successful collaborative project business model innovation in ecosystems: • Antecedent heterogeneous preferred individual and organisational behaviours (Jung, 1968). • Frontloading of collaborative project BMI for knowledge creation (Autio and Thomas, 2014). The underlying dynamic processes of these two issues created suggestions for collaborative value creation (Porter and Kramer 2011, Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010) with a higher reliability of interfaces and a faster flow through the port, requiring lesser investments. Hereby innovation (Amabile et al., 1997) is organised (Brink, 2016) for horizontal leadership in knowledge creation in project execution to increase MWh-performance with less costs in offshore wind park ecosystems. A contribution is thus made to shed light on the hitherto black box of ecosystem innovation (Khanagha et al., 2014) in offshore wind energy to contain BMI on overall project level enabled by heterogeneous individual and organisational behaviours for horizontal leadership in knowledge creation. The offshore wind park ecosystems now have access to knowledge about the

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essential issues for collaborative project BMI activities reaching beyond own individual organisation. It means an open approach regarding project BMI for utilization of synergies among ecosystem participants. In the moment this is not present and therefore considerable change is needed to use the approach suggested from the research in ecosystem projects on a more general level. Additionally, the findings shed light on the practices needed in the hitherto black box of BMI processes in ecosystems to provide information for innovation and value creation. Awareness and acknowledgement of heterogeneity of ecosystem participants are found important for innovative open discussions and suggestions to be implemented for innovation to succeed in value creation based on horizontal leadership in knowledge creation. REFERENCES Abernathy, W.J. & Utterback, J.M. (1988). Patterns in industrial innovation. In M.L. Tushman & W.L. Moore (ed.), Readings in the Management of Innovation (pp. 55-78). New York: Harper Business. Adner, R. & Kapoor, R. (2010). Value creation in innovation ecosystems: How the structure of technological interdependence affects firm performance in new technology generations. Strategic Management Journal, 31(3), 306-339. Amabile, T.M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1154-1184. Autio, E. & Thomas, L.D.W. (2014). Innovation ecosystems: Implications for innovation management. In M. Dodgson, D.M. Cann & N. Philips (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management (pp. 204-229). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benton, S., Schurink, C., & Desson, S. (2008). An Overview of the Development, Validity and Reliability of the English Version 3.0 of the Insights Discovery Evaluator. London: University of Westminster. Retrieved May 6, 2020, from http://insightscw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ExecutiveSummary-Validity-and-Reliability.pdf.Aug_.2008.pdf – updated 2017 according to link: https://www.insights.com/what-we-do/validity/ Brady, T. & Hobday, M. (2012). Projects and innovation. In P.W.G., Morris, J.K Pinto & J. Söderlund (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Project Management (pp. 273-296). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brink, T. (2016). Organising to enable innovation. International Journal of Business and Innovation Research, 10(2/3), 402-433. Brink, T., Madsen, S.O., & Lutz, S. (2015). Perspectives on How Operation & Maintenance (O&M) Innovations Contribute to the Reduction of Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) in Offshore Wind Parks. Danish Wind Industry Association. Retrieved April 25, 2018, from http://ipaper.ipapercms.dk/Windpower/OWDrapport Brusoni, S., Prencipe, A., & Pavitt, K. (2001). Knowledge specialization, organizational coupling, and the boundaries of the firm: Why do firms know more than they make? Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(4), 597-621. Cameron, K.S. & Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Crown Estate (2012). Offshore Wind Cost Reduction Pathways Study. Retrieved February 16, 2019, from https://bvgassociates.com/publications/ Csikszentmihaly, M. (1997). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial. Csikszentmihaly, M. (2002). Flow: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness. London: Rider. de Langen, P.W. & Haezendonck, E. (2012). Ports as clusters of economic activity. In W.K. Talley (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Maritime Economics (pp. 638-655). Chichester: WileyBlackwell. De Martino, M. & Morvillo, A. (2008). Activities, resources and inter-organizational relationships: Key factors in port competitiveness. Maritime Policy & Management, 35(6), 571-589. Eisenhardt, K.M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. The Academy Management Review, 14(4), 532-550. Eisenhardt, K.M., Graebner, M.E., & Sonenshein, S. (2016). Grand challenges and inductive methods: Rigor without rigor mortis. Academy of Management Journal, 59(4), 1113-1123. EWEA (2019). Offshore Wind in Europe. Key trends and Statistics 2018. Retrieved March 30, 2019, from https://windeurope.org/about-wind/statistics/offshore/european-offshore-wind-industry-key-trends-statistics-2018/ Foss, N.J. & Saebi, T. (2017). Fifteen years of research on business model innovation: How far have we come, and where should we go? Journal of Management, 43(1), 200-227. Gustafsson, R. & Autio, E. (2011). A failure trichotomy in knowledge exploration and exploitation. Research Policy, 40(6), 819-850. Hauke, C. (2006). The unconscious: Personal and collective. In R.K. Papadopoulos (ed.), The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications (pp. 54-74). London/New York: Routledge. Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC). Biography. Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://www.biography. com/scholar/hippocrates Hollen, R. (2015). Exploratory Studies into Strategies to Enhance Innovation-Driven International Port Competitiveness in a Port Context. Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam. Jacobi, J. (1973). The Psychology of C.G. Jung. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jung C.G. (1923). Psychological Types. London: Routledge. Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https:// psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm Jung, C.G. (1968). Archetypes and the collective unconscious. I H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler & W. McGuire (eds.), The Collected Works of Jung, Volume 9, Part 1 (pp. 3-41). London: Routledge. Khanagha, S., Volberda, H., & Oshri, I. (2014). Business model renewal and ambidexterity: Structural alteration and strategy formation process during transition to a Cloud business model. R&D Management, 44(3), 322-340. Killen, C.P. & Drouin, N. (2017). Project portfolio management. A dynamic capability and strategic asset. In S. Sankaran, R. Müller & N. Drouin (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Organizational Project Management (pp. 55- 69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koller, T., Goedhart, M., & Wessels, D. (2010). Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies. Hoboken: University Edition, Wiley Finance. Malerba, F. & Adams, P. (2014). Sectoral systems of innovation. In M. Dodgson, D.M. Gann & N. Philips (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Innovation (pp. 183-203). Oxford: Oxford University Press. McIntyre, A. (2008). Participatory Action Research. Qualitative Methods and Series, v. 52. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Miles, M.B., Huberman, A.M., & Saldana, J. (2014). Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook. 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

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Mueller, J.S., Melwani, S., & Goncalo, A. (2012). The bias against creativity: Why people desire but reject creative ideas. Psychological Science, 23(1), 13-17. Osterwalder, A. & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Porter, M.E. & Kramer, M.R. (2011). Creating shared value. Harvard Business Review. Schneider, S. & Spieth, P. (2013). Business model innovation: Towards an integrated future research agenda. International Journal of Innovation Management, 17(1), 1-34. Steiber, A. & Alänge, S. (2015). Organizational innovation: Verifying a comprehensive model for catalysing organisational development and change. Triple Helix, 2(14): 1-28. Yin, R.K. (2018). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods. 6th edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

H AV E YOU C O NSIDE RE D A L L A SPEC T S IN YOU R C H A NG E PL A N? Peter H. Car stensen and Ot to Vinter HAVE YOU CONSIDERED ALL ASPEC T S IN YOUR CHANGE PL AN?

A B S T R AC T This chapter presents an innovative approach to the planning and implementation of innovations and change initiatives. We have identified nine aspects that you should consider in your action plan for a change or innovation project. We have studied recommended change actions proposed by the major authors of change management literature. Through analytic induction and peer validation, we have arrived at nine groups of recommendations for action, which we coin change-aspects. We argue that these nine aspects are relevant irrespective of the change strategy or school you intend to follow and should always be considered when you develop an action plan for a change project. Apart from presenting the aspects and their definition we also describe how you could improve your leadership of change projects by using them to develop a charter for the change project where you set the directions, policies and guidelines for your action plan. 1. I N T RO DU C T I O N When you want to innovate, improve or just ensure that your organization acts in accordance with rules and regulations, a central issue is how to deal with change. If we cannot properly manage the desired change the innovation or change project will in most cases fail. This is irrespective of whether you introduce new tools and technologies, perform an organizational implementation as a result of a development project, or you want to change work processes and routines. It is all about changing people’s way of thinking and working, and that is inherently complex and requires good leadership skills. We have been interested in finding out what the authors of change management literature advise a change project manager to put in his or her action plan with the intent of compiling a list of recommended actions, and to investigate the 37

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usefulness of the advices and recommendations for planning and executing a change. We started our study by looking into the literature that is the foundation for the ten overall change strategies defined in ISO/IEC/TR 33014 (Guide for Process Improvement) (2013). When we looked at the resulting list of recommendations, we felt that we had to supplement this literature with more literature from other prominent authors. During our literature study we identified and validated nine aspects that can be seen as overall headings or categories for the concrete actions on a change project. The change-aspects are listed in Table 1 on page 41-42. After evaluating the change-aspects through several interactions with consultants, change project managers, master students etc. we are confident that these nine change-aspects can support management, process consultants or change project managers when planning a change. To improve your leadership of innovation and change projects we propose that you develop a charter for the change project using the change-aspects to set the directions, establish policies and guidelines for the detailed planning and implementing of your specific action plan for a change in your particular context. In this chapter we will first set the stage by briefly providing a bit of background on the research field of change management (section 2), and then describe the essence of our process of extracting relevant recommended actions from the change management literature, and how we arrived at identifying the nine change-aspects (section 3). We then present each of the change-aspects in section 4. In section 5 we describe how you could improve your leadership of innovation and change projects by using the change-aspects to develop a charter for the change project setting the directions, policies and guidelines for your action plan. Finally, we reflect on potential biases and discuss the usability of the change-aspects in practice. 2. A BRI E F B AC KG RO U N D O N C H A N G E M A N AG E M E N T L I T E R AT U R E Many authors have written about change management and change processes. As mentioned in the introduction the ISO/IEC/TR 33014 standard on process improvement (2013) lists ten overall change strategies – or schools of change. These ten strategies cover a wide spectrum of approaches, from completely re-engineering the whole business and organization to allowing parts of the organization to only adopt the parts they deem valuable; and from being fully dictated by top-

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management (commanding) to be purely driven by the initiatives of the employees. Among the widely known and broadly recognized authors can be mentioned Kotter who provides an eight point plan for a change (2012), and Mintzberg (1983) who suggests an overall conceptual framework for understanding and changing different organization structures. In the 1990s Michael Hammer and his associates became famous for the ideas of reengineering the whole corporation completely (1993). Among other authors can be mentioned Senge’s approach to change organizations through socializing and learning (1990), and Huy (2001) who suggests sequencing strategies over time. Besides the academic literature many bloggers and consultancy companies have provided lists of recommendations. For example, the web-site strategy + business (www.strategy-business.com) provides ten principles for leading change management by focusing on culture and how to involve all layers of the organization. Throughout the literature are mentioned issues like motivating people and sharing the vision. The focus is on how to structure and plan the change and the processes to be followed. Little, however, is provided in terms of overall frameworks of common aspects to be considered by change project managers, process consultants and other change agents when they plan the actions to be performed. The nine change-aspects presented in this chapter attempt to provide such a framework. 3. O U R R E S E A RC H A P P ROAC H Our original research idea was to deliver a list of recommended actions to management and change-teams upon which they could build their change plans. The recommendations should be based on what a series of prominent authors of literature on change management have found essential. The main approach to this part of our work could be understood as analytic induction, cf. Miles & Huberman (1995): Starting from a small number of cases of the phenomenon, search for similarities that could point to common factors, and then study further cases until they converge. We began by extracting recommended actions from the literature behind two of the ten strategies identified in ISO/IEC/TR 33014 (2013). The two strategies are named: Optionality and Specialist-driven). We read the texts from end-to-end and extracted statements by the author(s) that seemed characteristic for the strat-

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egy. One of us read through the texts and the other was reviewing the extracted recommendations. We kept the recommendations as close to the original statements in the texts as possible. Our main intervention was to make the statements actionable. When we looked at the resulting recommended actions, we could see that some were addressing the same aspect of the change (e.g. culture). We initially identified eight change-aspects. We then hypothesized that the eight change-aspects would be applicable also to the recommendations for the remaining strategies. We discussed each aspect and defined them properly. During this process we realized that the aspects were not completely without overlap. Their usefulness in practice was more important to us than whether they were 100% distinct from each other. To validate our hypothesis further we repeated the process for two more of the ten strategies named: Production-organized and Socializing. The extracted recommendations were analyzed for whether they could be allocated to the eight change-aspects. We found this rather easy. However, to make sure that this was not the result of our bias we presented our results to the authors of Pries-Heje & Johansen (2015) who had also been involved in the identification of the ten strategies. They proposed three more aspects, but in our analysis, we found that two were already covered, whereas the third required an addition to the description of one of our change-aspects. With these changes in place we went on to repeat our process for the remaining six strategies. The review and the analysis of the six remaining strategies thus resulted in a consolidation of the eight change-aspects. To evaluate further we presented the recommended actions and the change-aspects to a team of master students at Roskilde University specializing in change management. We presented them at workshops and seminars for change agents and both groups found the change-aspects applicable and useful in their own company contexts. Recently we have decided to split one of the original change-aspects (Methods & Techniques) into two because we found it too broadly defined. The splitting was based on a review of the existing recommendations looking for patterns. The resulting nine change-aspects are listed in Table 1 along with a short definition and some example recommendations from literature. We have also worked on how the change-aspects could best be integrated into “real life” change processes in practice. This has been done by studying sugges-

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tions and models in existing approaches and through discussions with practitioners. During this process we have realized that the change-aspects not only could be used to assist in the detailed planning of a change (e.g. as a checklist), but could also be used proactively by management and change-teams to structure the work on setting the direction for a change. Therefore we now propose that management, process consultants or change project managers develop a charter for the change project where they use the change-aspects to support the structuring of the work of setting directions, policies and guidelines for the change project. This will be explained in section 5. 4. T H E N I N E C H A N G E- A S P EC T S T O BE C O N S I DE R E D IN A CHANGE PL AN The approach mentioned in the previous section has so far involved a careful review of 45 books and articles yielding 967 recommendation statements. Of these we have selected those recommendations that were most clearly relevant for innovation and change project managers. This selection resulted in a total of 257 recommendations covering all of the change-aspects of the ten overall change strategies; with 37 to 72 recommendations for each strategy. In addition to those we have also selected 79 recommendations that could be applied to many strategies. The change-aspects were originally documented in Carstensen & Vinter (2017) and published more widely in Carstensen & Vinter (2018a). For a description of how the change-aspects were used in a software improvement context we encourage you to consult our previously published paper (Carstensen & Vinter, 2018b). The nine change-aspects are listed in Table 1 along with a short definition and some example recommendations from literature. CHANGE-ASPECT

Short definition and example recommendations from literature

ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOUR

Defined as the attitude and behaviour that should be exercised or demonstrated by the change manager/team during the execution of the change. • “Act with benevolence to both victims and survivors e.g. through voluntary separation and generous compensation” (Huy, 2001: 614) • “Encourage all members to be leaders and “own” their leadership to evoke greater responses from everyone” (Stacey, 2011: 282)

COMMUNI­ CATION

Defined as types of information that should be communicated, to/by whom, when, and through which channels. • “Promote communication between communities of practice” (Ciborra et al., 2000: 69) • “Meet employees face to face and communicate your vision” (Huy, 2001: 612)

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COMPETENCES AND TRAINING

Defined as the competences management and change-team should have before the work on the change is initiated, or which should be built up on the way. • “Ensure that the local adopters are sufficiently educated/trained to understand the big picture about the available innovation/change” (Rogers, 2003: 399). • “Train change agents to become competent in interpersonal inquiry” (Huy, 2001: 608).

CULTURE

Defined as the culture that should be established/changed/supported in the organization to secure the success. • “Engage in recurrent rituals to build shared meanings” (Huy, 2001: 608) • “Encourage people to challenge and examine alternatives” (Ciborra et al., 2000: 619).

DECISIONMAKING

Defined as decisions and commitments that are important to make and achieve before and during the work on the change, who should make them, when and within what scope. • Shift power to the experts (specialists) by virtue of their knowledge” (Mintzberg, 1983: 106). • “Enable the diffusion and adoption of the change by making alternatives clear” (Rogers, 2003: 6).

KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

Defined as the knowledge that should be obtained/gained/collected before and during the work on the change. • “Study norms and conventions that provide the implicit context for performing practices” (Ciborra et al., 2000: 23) • “Ensure that the impact of existing initiatives are evaluated and considered carefully before starting another series of improvement initiatives” (Oakland, 2003: 159).

MAINTAINING FOCUS

Defined as how to maintain the direction and progress of the change focusing on objectives, outcomes and other results. • “Set standards or targets for performance, or expected outcomes; and take corrective action to remove any deviations from these” (Stacey, 2011: 78) • “Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service” (Oakland, 2003: 18)

ORGANIZING

Defined as how the change-team as well as everyone involved or affected by the change should be organized/structured. • “Ensure that leadership of the change belongs to one small group of people typically located at the top of the hierarchy” (Huy, 2001: 605) • “Establish and cultivate communities of practice” (Ciborra et al., 2000: 22).

PROCESSES AND PLANS

Defined as the concrete plans and processes that management and changeteam establish for the work. • “Overhaul processes which create a vicious cycle of overload, stress, burnout and low morale” (Ciborra et al., 2000: 612). • “Use comprehensive strategic planning including competitive analysis and portfolio management” (Huy, 2001: 604).

Ta b l e 1. T h e n i n e c h a n g e - a s p e c t s , w i t h e x a m p l e r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s f r o m l i t e r a t u r e .

The change-aspects in Table 1 represent a categorization of the most widely recognized recommendations for action by major authors writing about how to or-

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ganize and execute changes in a wide range of organizational contexts and change situations. As you can see, some of the change-aspects cover how the work should be planned and undertaken i.e.: Processes and plans, Maintaining Focus. Other change-aspects have to do with ensuring that the relevant information is collected, how the work should be organized and how decisions should be made – before and during the change project i.e.: Knowledge acquisition, Organizing, Decision-making. Finally some change-aspects have to do with the people involved in the actual change i.e.: Attitude and behaviour, Culture, Communication, Competences and training. In section 3 we explained why we are convinced that the nine change-aspects in Table 1 cover all the central themes that should be considered and included in a change plan. In the next section we will describe how you can use the changeaspects when developing a change plan in a particular context. 5. A P P LY I N G T H E C H A N G E- A S P EC T S F O R T H E P L A N N I N G O F YO U R C H A N G E P RO J EC T This section describes a novel way in which you can perform the planning of innovation and change projects and how you can use the change-aspects to take leadership of your change project. The idea has been proposed in Carstensen & Vinter (2020) as an extension to the tactical level of the ISO/IEC/TR 33014 standard (2013) to deal with change initiatives that have a wider scope than process improvement. In most cases the innovation or change initiatives have not been defined and prioritized properly by the initiator/owner of the change. You therefore need a way to perform this. We propose that you as the change project manager invite the project initiator/owner, important stakeholders, and change-team to a workshop where you together will develop a charter for the change project. The purpose of the charter for a change project is like any normal development project charter (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter). It outlines the directions, establishes policies and guidelines for the detailed planning and implementation of the change project for your particular context. The novel idea is that the charter for an innovation or change project should be based on and structured by the change-aspects described in the previous section. Defining the changes needed i.e. the vision for the future is the responsibility

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of the (top level) management represented by the initiator/owner. The change initiative should be aligned with the business goals and within the scope of the organizational change. It is important that the desired end-state (after the changes has been implemented) is defined clearly, i.e. which specific goals to achieve. When the change initiative has been identified, the workshop participants elaborate on the vision, intent and idea – making it clear how the changes to be initiated best meet the business needs of the organization and how the execution of the changes should be approached in the organization. This could be introduced through a statement like the one used in agile development contexts: will implement in order to achieve the

Then for each of the change-aspects listed in Table 1, the participants in the workshop should discuss how they will ensure that this change-aspect is properly addressed in the subsequent steps of detailed planning and implementation of the change project. Through this discussion they should set the direction; establish policies and guidelines for the detailed planning and implementation of the change project, i.e. develop the contents of the charter for the change. In Table 2 is shown how a partly completed hypothetical charter for a change project might look giving examples of directions for each change-aspect. The examples presented in Table 2 are taken from the recommendations we found in the change management literature and should therefore be replaced in practice by detailed and contextualized directions for the particular organization and change initiative. When the charter for the change project has been completed in the workshop and signed off by the participants, you as change project manager have gained leadership of your project and stand on a much more solid ground to start the detailed planning and implementation of your change project.

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CHANGE-ASPECT

Examples of directions, policies and guidelines found in literature

ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOUR

• We will act with benevolence to both victims and survivors e.g. through voluntary separation and generous compensation (Huy, 2001: 614) • We will co-ordinate, advise and manage instead of keeping control centrally (Ciborra et al., 2000: 39) • We will treat …

COMMUNICATION

• We will develop and publish clear documented corporate beliefs and purpose – a mission statement (Oakland, 2003: 36) • We will establish and maintain a shared vision (Andersen & et al., 2001: 96) • We will inform …

COMPETENCES AND TRAINING

• We will develop leadership skills among middle managers to install new values in them (Huy, 2001: 620) • We will develop “cookbooks”, manuals and train employees in the standardized routines (Mintzberg, 1983: 40) • We will educate …

CULTURE

• We will encourage individuals to establish improvement goals for themselves and their groups (Oakland, 2003: 19) • We will establish a sense of urgency to gain the needed cooperation for the change (Kotter, 2012: 37) • We will engage in …

DECISIONMAKING

• We will base our management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short term financial goals (Liker, 2004: 5) • We will drive responsibility downwards to set-off self-organization and innovation (Stacey, 2011: 282) • We will delegate …

KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

• We will ensure that the impact of existing initiatives are evaluated and considered carefully before starting another series of improvement initiatives (Oakland, 2003: 159) • We will identify the process owners who are responsible for the business process (Grover et al., 1995: 119) • We will assess …

MAINTAINING FOCUS

• We will set standards or targets for performance, or expected outcomes; and take corrective action to remove any deviations from these (Stacey, 2011: 78) • We will ensure that people assigned to the change activities are not pulled away from these responsibilities (Pande & Holpp, 2000: 77) • We will check …

ORGANIZING

• We will ensure that leadership of the change belongs to one small group of people typically located at the top of the hierarchy (Huy, 2001: 605) • We will create loosely coupled organizations, where the experimenting units are highly buffered (separated) from the exploiting units (Benner & Tushman, 2003: 247) • We will structure …

PROCESSES AND PLANS

• We will ensure control at all stages of planning and operationalization of the strategy (Mintzberg et al., 2009: 55) • We will find the optimal rate of change rather than the fastest (Senge, 1990: 62) • We will execute …

Ta b l e 2. P a r t l y c o m p l e t e d h y p o t h e t i c a l c h a r t e r f o r a c h a n g e p r o j e c t w i t h e x a m p l e s f r o m l i t e rature for each of the nine change-aspect s.

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6. CONCLUSION In this chapter we have presented nine change-aspects that we argue are relevant for innovation and change projects irrespective of the approach and change strategy you intend to apply. These change-aspects should always be considered when you develop an action plan for an innovation or a change project. The change-aspects were derived from a large survey of the change management literature through which we have extracted statements representing the authors’ recommendations for actions for change. We have furthermore argued that your leadership of innovations or change projects could be supported and improved through establishing a charter for the change that outlines the directions, establishes policies and guidelines for the detailed planning and implementation of the change project. The development of the charter should be structured around the nine change-aspects even though it is contextualized to your specific change situation. Although we have looked into a lot of literature from leading researchers on change management, we do realize that we have not included all relevant literature on change management, and that the real validation of the usefulness of the change-aspects and the ideas of developing a change-charter can only take place on real-life cases. We have started this evaluation of the usefulness and applicability of the change-aspects and the change-charter idea through interaction with change agents and consultants, and by having groups of change management master students apply the concepts and ideas in their project work. The results of this have been very confirmative so far. However, this is ongoing research and there is still a need for further testing and evaluation of the usefulness of the concepts and ideas. Given the reservations above, we are confident that the change-aspects we have found can be used on real-life innovation and change projects. We firmly believe that when you plan changes in your organization, they will be highly supportive to developing a change project charter specific for your context where you specify the directions, policies and guidelines central to your change. Also when developing your detailed action plan for your change project we believe that the nine change-aspects in Table 1 should be carefully considered.

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REFERENCES Andersen, C.V., Krath, F., Krukow, L., Mathiassen L., & Pries-Heje, J. (2001). The Grass Root Effort. In L. Mathiassen et al. (eds.), Improving Software Organizations: From Principles to Practice (83-98). Upper Saddle River: Addison-Wesley. Benner, M. & Tushman, M. (2003). Exploitation, exploration, and process management: The productivity dilemma revisited. Academy of Management Review, 28(2), 238-256. Carstensen, P.H. & Vinter, O. (2017). Aspects you should consider in your action plan when implementing an improvement strategy. In A. Mas et al. (eds.), SPICE 2017 Conference Proceedings, CCIS 770 (pp. 467-480). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-31967383-7_34 Carstensen, P.H. & Vinter, O. (2018a). Developing action plans based on strategy: Aspects to consider. Software Quality Professional Journal, 20(2), 4-15. Carstensen, P.H. & Vinter, O. (2018b). Eight aspects of actions in improvement plans. In X. Larrucea et al. (eds.), Proceedings of EuroAsiaSPI 2018 (pp. 147-158). Springer Nature Series CCIS 896. Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-97925-0_12 Carstensen, P.H. & Vinter, O. (2020). Expanding the Tactical Level in ISO/IEC 33014 to Deal with a Broader Set of Change Initiatives. Submitted to the 19th International SPICE Conference (SPICE 2020), Roskilde University, April 6-8. Ciborra, C.U. & Associates (2000). From Control to Drift. The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grover, V., Jeong S.R., Kettinger, W.J., & Teng, J.T.C. (1995). The implementation of business process reengineering. Journal of Management Information Systems, 12(1), 109-144. Hammer, M. & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. New York: Harper Business. Huy, Q.N. (2001). Time, temporal capability, and planned change. Academy of Management Review, 26(4), 601-623. ISO/IEC/TR 33014 (2013). Information Technology–Process Assessment–Guide for Process Improvement. Geneva: ISO/IEC. Kotter, J.P. (2012). Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. Liker, J.K. (2004). The Toyota Way. New York: McGraw-Hill. Miles, M.B. & Huberman, A.M. (1995). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. Mintzberg, H. (1983). Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B., & Lampel, J. (2009). Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management. 2nd edition. London: Financial Times/Harlow: Prentice-Hall. Oakland, J.S. (2003). TQM: Text with Cases. 3rd edition. London: Butterworth-Heinemann. Pande, P.S. & Holpp, L. (2000). What is Six Sigma? New York: McGraw Hill. Pries-Heje, J. & Johansen, J. (2015). Choosing change strategy for ISO/IEC 33014. Journal of Software Evolution and Process, 27(8), 573-583. Rogers, E.M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations. 5th edition. New York: Free Press. Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday. Stacey, R. (2011). Strategic Management and Organizational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity. 6th edition. Essex: Pearson Educational.

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A c k n o w l e dg m e n t s We wish to thank Professor Jan Pries-Heje (Roskilde University) and Partner Jørn Johansen (Whitebox) for thoughtful discussions and review of the changeaspects. We also wish to thank the change management master students at Roskilde University for their contribution in the validation process. Also the editors of this book provided useful feedback. The two authors of this chapter are listed in alphabetical order only. The chapter is a joint effort.

DIL E M M A S A N D PA R A DOX E S IN T HE M A N AG E ME N T OF PRO JEC T S, IN N OVAT IO N, A ND PRODUC T DE V E LOPME N T John Christiansen DIL EMM AS A ND PAR ADOX E S IN T HE M A N AGEMEN T OF PRO JEC T S, INNOVAT ION, A ND PRODUC T DE V ELOPMEN T

A B S T R AC T Drawing on several examples that eventually produced highly innovative outcomes, the cases reveal that the managerial behaviour was not following orthodox managerial recommendations but represents situations with counterintuitive behaviour based on events showing managerial dilemmas and paradoxes. The recent increased interest in dilemmas and paradoxes, as opposed to the dominating trend of incremental gap-spotting research, provides an opportunity first to discuss the power of acknowledging dilemmas and paradoxes and then to discuss several observed dilemmas and paradoxes. Accepting dilemmas and paradoxes allows for a broader interpretation of the challenges with the management of projects and innovation that makes it possible to recognize the simultaneous existence of opposites when trying to manage innovative projects, e.g., hiring fast adaptive learners versus having deliberate slow learners. I M P L I C AT I O N S F O R P R AC T I C E • The most efficient organizations and projects are those that have fundamental problematic dilemmas and paradoxes – but can handle those and adapt to a dynamic mix of constituents. • The combination and strength of the various pull and forces might change over time, and their importance is unpredictable and emerges from situation to situation in a bricolage. • Instead of trying to solve the paradoxes a better strategy can be to improve the ability to handle the cognitive and behavioural stress that comes with such situations. • Secondly, it might be good advice to accept the instability and conflicting de49

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mands by adapting to some form of ambidextrous organization, maybe even both with a structural and a cognitive type of solution. • Ambidexterity can lead to a loosely coupled organization that provides the ability to pursuit multiple competing goals having different time frames. However, the most significant benefits require some form of temporary and cognitive coupling from time to time. 1. I N T RO DU C T I O N Despite new outlets emerging and an increase in published research, there is a growing concern that management research has lost its way and has become dull and obsessed with microscopic gap finding (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013). There seems to be a paradoxical reverse relationship between the increase of publications in the last three decades and the lack of influential or even interesting new theories. There is much attention towards rigor in management studies, while relevance and influence seem to be lost, and there is a need for research that is not based on gap-spotting, as said: “… to challenge the value of an established theory or a framework, and to explore its weaknesses and problems concerning the phenomenon it is supposed to explicate. It means to generally open up and to point out the need and possible directions for rethinking and developing it. We consequently suggest a methodology for theory development through encounters between theoretical assumptions and empirical impressions that involve breakdowns. It is the unanticipated and the unexpected – the things that puzzle the researcher – that are of particular interest in the encounter”. (Sandberg & Alvesson, 2013: 146)

Furthermore, Sandberg & Alvesson (2013) suggest developing a sensibility towards accepting the ambiguities and complexities in our social world. We should apply problematization based on Foucault’s (1985: 9) conceptualization of problematization “as an ‘endeavor to know-how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of what is already known.’ A central goal in such problematization is to try to disrupt the reproduction and continuation of an institutionalized line of reasoning.” (Sandberg & Alvesson, 2011: 32). But not having problematization as a mean, but “to identify and challenge assumptions underlying existing theory and based on that, being able to formulate more informed and novel research questions (ibid: 32). Others have chimed in with simi-

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lar concerns from the paradox between high volume production and low relevance and impact with research being focused on boring gap-spotting and incrementalism and have analyzed the production of nonsense from this type of research (Tourish, 2020). The interest in dilemmas here is spurred by a tendency in some project management thinking to produce single-sided solutions, or best-practices, that conceal that there are alternatives, that the choice is not so obvious and that there might be a hidden dilemma in the situation, e.g., should we build on own competencies or go outside the project? Or should we ask the customers about their preferences or produce an astonishing new design product? Thus, the present analysis follows the advice of accepting the existence of paradoxes and use it constructively (Poole & van de Ven, 1989). To avoid the trap of boring gap-spotting and incrementalism, the analysis and reflections here will build on a sincere interest in managerial dilemmas. A claim is that paradoxes and dilemmas mirror the dialectical nature inherent in management, and the illustrations used here act as pedagogical illustrations (Fredericks & Miller, 2017). Managerial dilemmas here are illustrated by situations where there exists a dilemma, and there is no obvious solution, but a choice or action needs to be made. Each choice – as usual – has implications. The problem formulation for the present research departs from an interest in and acknowledgment of the existence of paradoxes and dilemmas in organizations and especially in project management and innovation management: What can we learn about paradoxes and dilemmas in project and innovation management by revisiting some selected illustrative cases? The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows: First, there is an introduction to paradoxes and dilemmas, before a presentation of the rich case material from which the extracted examples are derived. Some selected examples of paradoxes and dilemmas are presented before a discussion and a short conclusion with some implications for practice. 2. PA R A D OX E S A N D D I L E M M A S A S V E H I C L E S T O U N DE RS TA N D A C O M P L E X A N D A M BI G U O U S WO RL D The key characteristic of paradox is ‘the simultaneous presence of contradictory, even mutually exclusive elements’ (Cameron & Quinn, 1988: 2). Paradoxes and dilemmas are problematic cases, conundrums, or puzzles that force us to accept

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counterintuitive conclusions from apparently acceptable premises or to choose among equally undesirable outcomes without apparent justification. A paradox is thus bounded by two opposites, as stated by Slate (1968: 4): “A paradox is an idea involving two opposing thoughts or propositions which, how­ ev­er, contradictory, are equally necessary to convey a more imposing, illuminating, life-related or provocative insight into truth than either factor can muster in its own right. What the mind seemingly cannot think it must think; what reason is reluctant to express it must express.”

The interest in paradoxes and associated concepts like dilemmas, dualities, and dialectics can be traced to multiple sources as philosophy, language theory, and – lately – management studies (Smith & Lewis, 2011). Some ascribe the interest to emerging trends in the global environments, competition, and innovation, that makes contradictory demands intensify. To understand and explain such tensions, scholars and practitioners are increasingly adopting a paradox lens (Smith & Lewis, 2011). Projects are stretched between demands for bringing change and new outcomes and the paradox of accountability, risk management, and predictability. Constituents around non-routine projects – if that type does exist – hence produce their own paradox, asking for predictability while expected grand and compelling solutions bringing new innovative solutions within budget, time and cost, etc. Projects and project management thus somehow share faith with innovation management, which has, for a long time, recognized the existence of competing demands, including tensions between novelty and usefulness, idea generation and implementation, and exploration versus exploitation (March, 1991). More recently, the interest in sustainability and frugal innovation has pointed to inherent challenges when trying to achieve innovation with a social mission while also providing companies with a reasonable profit that makes companies prosper. Often dilemmas and paradoxes have been regarded as being problematic and something that needs to be sorted out, solved or removed, so that the project and the organization can be focused, streamlined and well-coordinated as a welloiled machine. Although some like Lewis (2000) argue that paradoxes can “serve[s] as a lens for examining surprising findings and seemingly absurd aspects of organizational life,” often, the intention has been to try to solve or manage these. However, another stream acknowledges the opportunities for insights from understanding tensions, oppositions, and contradictions among explana-

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tions of the same phenomenon or to the existence of paradoxes in organizations. In management studies, the interest in paradoxes can be traced back to a call for research that went beyond theory construction methodologies attempting to build internally consistent theories of limited scope (Pole & van de Ven, 1989) focusing on oversimplified either or/or notions and instead explore the competing demands of innovation, change, and projects (Quinn & Cameron, 1988). This interest in accepting and exploring dilemmas in organizations and innovation was not only fueled by an academic theoretical interest but backed by – at that time – interesting research on effectiveness that first revealed that there were a plethora of different opinions and definitions of effectiveness that could be ordered in various ways in sets, but secondly, that large scale empirical research showed that the most effective organizations were also those characterized by paradoxes, i.e., contradictions, simultaneous opposites, and incompatibilities (Cameron, 1986). Besides, those that achieved the highest levels of effectiveness scores were also those that satisfied the most separate constituency group expectations, even when different constituencies held contradictory expectations. Highly effective organizations were paradoxical in that they performed on contradictory criteria. These observations, of course, represented a challenge or trial for those interested in identifying best practices, but also help identify some of the underlying reasons for the challenges for those trying to measure effectiveness along uniform scales. DILEMMA

Competing choices, each with advantages and disadvantages. Paradoxical when options are contradictory and interrelated such that any choice between them is temporary and tension will resurface.

PARADOX

Contradictory yet interrelated elements (dualities) that exist simultaneously and persist over time; such elements seem logical when considered in isolation, but irrational, inconsistent, and absurd when juxtaposed.

DUALITIES

(A and B) — Opposites that exist within a unified whole. Internal boundary creates distinction and highlights opposition. External boundary encourages synergies by constructing the unified whole.

DIALECTIC

Contradictory elements (thesis and antithesis) resolved through integration (synthesis), which, over time, will confront new opposition. Paradoxical when elements are both contradictory and interrelated. Because synthesis stresses their similarities, neglecting valued differences, integration is temporary. Need for disparate qualities persists such that synthesis gradually favors one over the other (i.e., C and D retain core characteristics of A and B, respectively).

Ta b l e 1. S o m e d e f i n i t i o n s o f u s e d t e r m s . D e r i v e d f r o m S m i t h & L e w i s (2 011).

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Paradox, then, involves contradictory, mutually exclusive elements that are present and operate equally at the same time. Paradoxes and dilemmas share the fact that there are opposing possible choices and actions. A dialectic is a pattern that always begins with a thesis followed by an antithesis and resolved by a synthesis. Studies of paradoxes in project management have been minimal – especially when comparing to innovation management – and those have treated paradoxes as being problematic. A recent example is Brady & Maylor (2010) who struggled to make sense of a paradox in a project-based organization that apparently did not have any high desire to improve their project management skills even if the researchers thought it was much needed. The two researchers come to terms with the observed paradox and acknowledge that there are many paradoxes in project management and that there is a need to explore these as they reflect the complexity and ambiguity in project contexts. Before providing the announced paradoxical illustrations, it is relevant to point to some of the dilemmas and paradoxes related to innovation and project management that have been addressed before. The opposing forces between being creative and innovative and meeting deadlines and budgets can foster a dilemma on what to focus on in product development projects and produce ambiguity to what one identifies is or should be. Gotsi et al. (2010) first identify how these opposing demands are evident in innovation projects in six cases but then show how a paradox-approach to these tensions can help to move our focus from control to understanding how different managerial strategies can make it possible to acknowledge and cope with such conflicting – paradoxical – demands, e.g., as separating – splitting -these forces and not trying to handle both simultaneously (Gotsi et al., 2010: 799). Andriopoulos (2003) conducted three in-dept studies in large international creative companies and found several paradoxical tensions, mixed messages, and oppositions that characterize the management of creative innovation projects. The key coping mechanisms to handle these paradoxes were found to be based on an embracement and acknowledgment of the interdependency of the contradictory tensions in these paradoxes rather than in treating these tensions as separate phenomena. Paradoxes can be increased by a scarcity of resources, e.g., limited time and funding, and the extent to which individuals are accepting of and energized by tensions is critical (Miron-Spektor et al., 2018). A substantial volume of research has focused on one overarching dilemma for companies, namely, how to balance between exploration and exploitation initially

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addressed with the influential paper by James G. March (March, 1991). March, among other things, discussed the need for significant different behaviour and recruitment to achieve one or the other thing and that striking a balance between these is a non-trivial matter. In the next two decades, a plethora of research has departed from these observations and researched and debated how organizations can achieve ambidexterity, being able to use both hands simultaneously. The main argument being that organizations need to be able to both produce and to innovate at the same time, but how do they best achieve this? Should organizations achieve ambidexterity through differentiation or integration? Does ambidexterity occur at the individual or organizational level? Must organizations take a static or dynamic perspective on ambidexterity? Can ambidexterity arise internally, or do firms have to externalize some processes (Raisch et al., 2009)? The dilemma of exploration and exploitation is not only related to the organizational level but is also evident in radical innovation projects, as discussed by Iansiti (2000). He finds that the semiconductor industry pursues exploration by allocating resources to massive parallel experimentation projects. In contrast, exploration efforts are supported by projects having a critical mass of experienced engineers that are very familiar with the product and production system, using experimentation to test and validate the outcomes from the radical explorative projects. Many suggest solving the dilemma by designing organizations to encompass both exploration and exploitation but in separate units and/or levels in so-called architectural ambidexterity (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2008). In contrast to these design-oriented solutions, contextual approaches use behavioural and social means to integrate exploitation and exploration (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009). Based on four years of intensive studies, the researchers uncovered several paradoxes in innovation and projects like; Strategic intent being on profit/breakthrough, customer orientation being focused on tight coupling/loose coupling, and personal drive being on discipline/passion (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009: 701-702). Observations indicate that companies need to handle the paradoxes actively and openly and that executives reconsider separating units to focus on either exploitation or exploration, and instead create units capable of pursuing both. This includes handling paradoxes spanning several levels and units, embracing tensions and valuing their synergies, and their distinctions by blending integration and differentiation. Finally, there is a need to understand how the simulations focus on exploration and exploitation leads to different types of learning that support each other (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009; March, 1991). Although being lo-

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cated at opposite poles, the explorative efforts bring in new knowledge and increase the absorptive capacity while the production-oriented exploitation stimulates the consumption of knowledge. Another study of seven market-leading companies in product design confirmed that the capability to handle – and accept – multiple paradoxes and stressing both/and thinking to foster synergy was critical for their innovation projects and the company (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2010). Focusing on business models has shown that they might also be complex and have built-in tensions so that they are paradoxical (Smith, Binns & Tushman, 2010) and require a management style that can embrace such tensions. Dilemmas and paradoxes are thus found in different situations, organizations, and at many different organizational levels as well as in projects and product development. What is new is the acknowledgment of their existence and that our understanding of them and the root causes can be a fountain for insights. 3. M E T H O D – E X T R AC T I N G I L L U S T R AT I V E E X A M P L E S F RO M A RI C H LY DE S C RI BE D C A S E The chapter apply an information-oriented selection of cases providing paradigmatic illustrations (Flyvbjerg, 2006: 230) of how paradoxical project management unfolds. Paradigmatic sampling is a type of strategic sampling that helps us find examples that are favorable of the claim in question (Flyvbjerg, 2006: 226); here, that project management and project leaders can manage projects so they produce successes by actions and behaviour that might seem paradoxical when observed from the outside. Examples are strategic samples that support the claim: Dilemmas and paradoxes and paradoxical behaviour can support projects in becoming successful. Project success is here not related to the traditional iron triangle of projects: time, cost, and quality (Maylor, 2010) but considers successful projects as those that make a meaningful and relevant impact (Kreiner, 2014). The examples are based on ‘casing’ (Ragin, 2009). Casing accepts the fact that we cannot document or analyze everything about a certain phenomenon, situation or ‘case’. Choices must be made. We do not have an extra world at hand to copy the existing one onto. We want to debate certain aspects leaving others out. “Empirical evidence is infinite in its complexity, specificity, and contextuality. Casing focuses attention on specific aspects of that infinity, highlighting some aspects as relevant and obscuring others “ (Ragin, 2009: 523). The choice of the specific casing in each situation links to certain theories, literatures and debates

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while omitting others. In the present situation the objective was to identify some examples of that demonstrated how project management and innovations management is sometimes faced with dilemmas and paradoxical situations. The paradigmatic illustrative cases are inferred from already published information and thus based on secondary data that is described by Glaser as re-analyzing data “which were originally collected for other purposes” (1963: 11). Using secondary data -is becoming easier as huge amounts of data are being collected and archived all over the world in these years. Compared to the vast amount of time and energy associated with collecting primary data, secondary data are cost-effective and convenient (Glaser, 1962). The paradigmatic illustrative cases here are sampled from two companies that – in various scales – have in the past proven to produce highly significant products that have made an impact and a difference that makes a difference: Apple Computers (Apple) and Bang & Olufsen (B&O). The paradigmatic cases show situations and instances where the usual ‘normative’ project management recommendations have been contradicted or challenged. There is a vast literature on Apple, the products from Apple, the innovation processes, and significant events, and Steve Jobs (1955-2011). Both works on Apple and Steve Jobs are relevant as sources since their destiny were entangled. The Copenhagen Business School library database contains 44 books where “Steve Jobs” is part of the title. The Royal Danish Library holds 129 books. But the search machines are not precise and include works that are not books even if classified as such, and in both cases, there are doublets and publications in various languages besides English. However, this gives an idea about the magnitude of impression and impact from the brand, the products, and its CEO. Searching the WorldCat database produces 996 book hits for ‘Steve Jobs,’ and 471 book hits for ‘Apple Computer’ in a search done on 18th December 2019. These books represent not only hundreds but thousands of hours of interviews around Apple, its products and Steve Jobs, presented as narratives from co-founders (Wozniak & Smith, 2006), co-workers (Hertzfeld, 2004; Koceinda, 2018), secret insiders revealing the dark – and secret – sides of the company with harsh, secretive working conditions inside and outside (by suppliers) (Lashinsky, 2013; Merchant, 2017; Linzmayer, 1999), competitors views and strategies (Arthur, 2012) and even exgirlfriends and mother of his first child (Brennan, 2013). Other books are trying to extract wisdom and lessons on leadership from Apple for the future (Corrigan, 2007) or focusing on the individual Steve Jobs as being able to think differently

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(Blumenthal, 2012) or being an inspirational, transformational leader (Harris, 2012). Several books focus on how the story of Apple is also about the context as being situated in Silicon Valley with leading high-tech companies (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) innovation laboratory, Hewlett-Packard) worldclass universities (Stanford) having an abundance of creative, highly educated “hackers, geniuses and geeks” (Isaacson, 2014) influenced by a ‘counterculture’ (Dormehl, 2012) and being able to navigate and co-create and explore and exploit to conceive innovative projects (Hertzfeld, 2004). Several books try to establish stronger and simpler narratives on the inside of the innovation processes with its phases of inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy – and a lot of hours with plain hard work (Kocienda, 2018), or how an explicit desire from Steve Jobs for simplicity (Segall, 2013) drives the design processes and projects with an exacting moderation for perfection (Blumenthal, 2012), or how having a ‘genius’ as chief designer in a close partnership with the CEO facilitates great designs (Kahney, 2013). Others subscribed the personal drive to excel of Jobs to a childhood being given to other parents and adopted – and often feeling ‘lost’ although his ‘new’ parents – as he also recognized them – surely cared for him (Isaacson, 2011). Others present the Apple narrative as the American dream coming true. Departing from a modest family house and garage in 1976 – only 10 miles from where Hewlett and Packard started their company in another garage in 1939. Others adhere the success to personal traits and skills. Inspired by a visionary leader (Schlender & Tetzeli, 2015) having a visionary religious imagination (Robinson, 2015). Others emphasize Steve Jobs’ ability to bend reality and his project teams to his chosen reality with his infamous ‘ Reality Distortion Field’ whereby he created the reality he needed or wanted to reach his goals (Isaacson, 2011) and his ability to be generous towards those that performed but rather rude or even cruel to those he did not respect (Isaacson, 2011) Finally, many present the narrative where Steve Jobs and the faith of the company are entangled (Shea, 2013) presented as a development journey with four phases: Firstly, the youngsters seizing opportunities with successes and the founding and initial growth of the company. Secondly, a phase with controversies and hard times (e.g., with IBM, Microsoft and internally in Apple) and failures (Steve Jobs being kicked out from Apple) and missed opportunities (Malone, 1999). Thirdly, new ways are explored when Steve Jobs engages with Pixar Animation Studios and the development of new software outside of Apple. Fourthly, the redemption with the triumphant return of Steve Jobs to Apple (Deutschman,

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2001) after twelve years in exile (Young & Simon, 2005) and how the company subsequently presents radical new service-products that transformed whole industries as iPod with its flexible music library (Jones, 2005), iPads and, not to forget, the iPhone and the Apple watch. As said in the introduction, there are many more works, and besides the written ones, there are hundreds of video clips available on various platforms. The Danish design icon Bang & Olufsen (B&O) might not have achieved as much as Apple in terms of turnover, profit, growth, or worldwide recognition. However, within its own niche of audio and video, the brand has achieved to be considered ‘reliable’ for many years. The number of publications and sources is obviously smaller than for Apple. Still, they do exist, and its location in Denmark has provided several opportunities for personal interaction with several past managers for the author. B&O has consistently been referred to as a strong example of a design-driven company (Austin & Beyersdorfer, 2006; Dell’Era, Marchesi & Verganti, 2010; Verganti, 2008; Verganti, 2006 and Verganti, 2011). Frost (2016) presents several considerable product successes over 70 years and why they were unique at the time, while Krause-Jensen (2013) explores and analyzes how the company has consistently been able to manage the product development employing several significant external designers and carefully evaluate their contributions and having a value-based management approach in the management (Krause-Jensen, 2010). The high level of professional product development management at B&O is used as a case example for a book (Kirkegård et al., 1996). The company history, management, and products have been described by insiders and managers several times. Bang provides a unique insight with a detailed report using many photographs and unique narratives of personalities (Bang, 2000). Four former top managers of B&O tell about the challenges and victories the companies experienced in a golden period from the late ’60s until early ’90s, where designers, finance, manufacturing, and marketing through a unique collaboration and with risk-taking top-management (Jensen, Skifter, Møller & Harder, 2003). A former CEO of Bang & Olufsen reports facilitated by a journalist his view on the years as a manager at the company (Poulsen, 1997). Finally, a chief design researcher put the B&O universe into a bigger context of Danish Design (Dybdahl, 2014).

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4. I L L U S T R AT I V E E X A M P L E S O F DI L E M M A S A N D PA R A D OX E S The examples below represent intriguing situations with managerial choices and actions not following conventual normative management suggestions. Furthermore, the decisions revealed an underlying dilemma and paradox that need our attention and should be discussed because the way the situation was handled proved to produce successful outcome(s) despite its unorthodox choice. These incidents – the illustrations – are derived from the author’s engagement and reading of the vast and rich literature around the companies, as presented above. This rich literature has allowed for an internal consistency check and verification of the illustrative examples. The illustrative examples presented here that convey underlying paradoxes are selected among a potential number of illustrations. 4.1 We s h o ul d al w ay s t r u s t t ha t w e ha v e t h e r e le v an t k n o w le dg e – o r – D o n o t a s k o ur e m p l oy e e s? Around the 1970s computers and users interaction was based on input from keyboards, and the screens showed command lines on a screen. How did Apple become the first company to develop the software to implement the desktop metaphor and having graphical user interface (GUI) controlled by a mouse having icons and the use of pop-up menus? The short answer is that they did not invent anything. The staff at Apple was certainly highly skilled, qualified, and motivated, but they did not have a clue about how to achieve these things. We are not even sure if they were aware of these recent developments. Traditionally project management literature (Maylor, 2010; Pinto, 2016) and product development (Harmancioglu et al., 2007) rely highly on solving the project task by bringing internal resources together in cross-functional teams (Maylor: 2010: 244) to establish the ‘perfect’ team (Pinto, 2016: 188-192) identifying the needed skills, matching team members with requirements and having with team-building efforts, team development and motivation in place, and then solve the task at hand. When are the high attention on the project team, its internal processes (Harmancioglu et al., 2007), and well-being not relevant? When there is a need for other skills and competencies, what do you then do? When you can’t rely on your own resources? You need to go outside. Not far from Apple campus was the well-known research laboratory, Xerox PARC, that was well connected to other innovation hubs in close vicinity. These included research on human cognition, learning, children’s interactions with computers and associated software and hardware developments backed by re-

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search and working solutions to a smoother human-computer interaction. There were some examples of graphic user interfaces applied to games, and already in 1973, Xerox PARC developed the Alto personal computer, which had GUI features, and the product was produced and heavily used at the Xerox and universities although it never really became a commercial product. Apparently, Apple and Steve Jobs somehow heard about this, and for “an undisclosed amount of Apple shares, Steve and a small team (including Steve Wozniak) – got access to what was known as the ‘treasure trove of Silicon Valley’ the Xerox PARCH.” As Steve Wozniak said, “here we saw the future” with GUI, a pointer moving documents on the screen with a mouse using folders and so on. This was the future. There was no going back from here. As we say, the rest is history. Reflecting on this famous example on when not to trust your project team to come up with the solutions or having the right competences, we can draw on recent developments within innovation around open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003) and its various implementations and uses (Christiansen, Gasparin & Varnes, 2013) and technology brokering (Hargadon & Sutton, 1997). Besides, there is an interesting paradox inside the paradox here, as it makes one speculate on why Xerox PARC and its commercial part did not capitalize on these breakthroughs? Apparently, Xerox had created a structure and ways of operating, that made it nearly impossible to move from great ideas and concepts into new products, e.g., due to top management being risk-averse and a regime of intensive number crunching and calculations that was needed to be overcome (Smith & Alexander, 1988). Others have focused on the complex organizational structure of Xerox, which “led to high levels of bureaucracy, delays in decision-making, and additional costs. A Xerox spokesperson later noted: “we had layered complexity into a structure that laid on costs, slowed decision making and masked responsibility” (Heracleous et al., 2017). A chief scientist at Xerox PARC expressed similar concerns stating, “there is …. a loss of flexibility in the large organization and compounding of overheads which translates itself into time delays in both the decision-making process and the introduction to market” (Heracleous et al., 2017). 4. 2 C u s t o m e r s k n o w w ha t t h e y w an t in t h e f u t ur e – o r – D o n o t li s t e n t o t h e c u s t o m e r s? To manage projects successfully it is recommended to align project with customer or sponsor expectations, and within product innovation, the importance of recording the voice of the customer and getting the information into the inno-

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vation projects are stressed (Griffin & Hauser, 1993), even within the conventional marketing literature (Kotler & Keller, 2016) and in conventional innovation strategy literature (Goffin & Mitchell, 2017). However, there are interesting examples of the opposite strategy being focused on new designs being proposed driven rather than customer driven (Dell’Era, Marchesi & Verganti, 2010). Maybe the ambition is to come up with something radical and impressive new, that noone has conceived before? The Apple iPod was not developed from focus groups, surveys, or from the collection of user-cases and ethnographic studies but was a complex product no customer had asked for. Reportedly from many sources, Apple and Steve Jobs were widely known for never asking any customers about their preferences or wishes for the future. The iPod represented several innovations, but the systemic one was probably the biggest. As Verganti states (2008: 441) “not simply due to its stylish form; indeed, before the iPod, there were already several other competing MP3 players with a much more stylish language in line with the dominant design language at that time (i.e., the language of the Sony Walkman). The iPod instead proposed a radical new language and, above all, a radical new meaning that implied a new experience limited not simply to listening to music but also, for example, accessing music on the Web through the iTunes website, financially supporting the music industry, and organizing and accessing songs through novel interfaces. Often the Marketing and Sale departments consider themselves as knowing the customers and their preferences, and in this way being those who represent knowledge about the customers and can assist in making strategic market decisions. Jacob Jensen illustrated this situation with the following case, based on personal communication. Jacob Jensen was one of the leading designers in Bang & Olufsen in (another) critical period in the company as there was a significant pressure to do something and make a crucial decision; either to copy the designs from emerging Hi-Fi industries in the far east – that were quickly overtaking the markets of companies in Europe and the USA – or to do something else? Should B&O copy the militaristic inspired Japanese design or come up with radical new designs, being true to the tradition of B&O of simple, clean Bauhaus-inspired designs with innovative, surprising solutions? The decision was made: A radical reinterpretation of the design of a record player as stated by Roberto Verganti (2008: 441) “Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound 4000 stereo released in 1972 transformed music players from electronic devices into pieces of furniture—an overturn of meanings so radical that not even GE grasped it when Jacob Jensen presented them his

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first prototype before moving to Bang & Olufsen (Jensen, 2005).” The 4000 series B&O also introduced a radical new interpretation and function with the tangential turntable and a very flat – never seen before – enclosure with the drive. Originally top management was not sure about the project, and asked the marketing and sales departments to investigate the market potential for the product, based on the conceptual models created so far (Jensen, 2005). After asking around in the worldwide sales and marketing units, the answer was expected sales of 50 units – a year! Despite of this B6O top management decided to go on with the product. This product and subsequent versions in the product family over the next several years became one of the biggest sales successes in the history of the company. Another twist on the customer relations is that instead of asking customers about their preferences, there are interesting cases where companies successfully have become better at listening to the complaints from existing customers and use this as inputs for new innovations (Christiansen et al., 2016). It is not difficult to identify several paradoxes within the area of project management and innovation management beyond those already discussed, but the list will be limited to expand the point just a little. • Argyris already in 1988 speculated about our paradoxical use of the notion of ‘management’ and its assumptions that we can manage others, but mostly nobody likes to be ‘managed’ (Argyris, 1988). Besides, in the process of trying to manage others, we apply devices, concepts, and theories, and our relation to those we try to manage becomes distant and mediated through various management technologies as project plans, estimates, deadlines, and calculations. We come to ignore that when trying to manage others, we need a relationship and have “a relationally responsive” (Shotter, 2005: 146) personal kind of interaction to others to really make a difference. • In project management, an overarching paradox is the use of projects to explore how interesting and relevant solutions could look like in a world enriched with ambiguity versus the constant pressure and craving for having specific plans and calculations. I will label this as the Kristian Kreiner paradox of project management. Kreiner has, for more than 40 years, been pointing to the need for reflection on how and why we use the concept of projects (Kreiner, 2014). His argument in the latter goes somewhat like this: Use projects for what they are intended for: Explore and suggest interesting and significant solutions in complex and ambiguous situations, not for meeting ex-

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plicit targets that are the outcome of systematic translations of organizational goals into performance targets. • A popular paradox in project management and innovation – popular because it is often mentioned – is the creativity versus control – which maybe even better be described as a dilemma. Writers within creativity like to portrait the evils stemming from any kind of restrictions enforced on the creative processes like plans or requests to adhere to specifications. It can be questioned if this is a real dilemma or paradox? It is true that such restrictions can lead to controversies in innovation projects, but are controversies always bad? They can be opportunities to reflect and rethink projects (Christiansen & Gasparin, 2016). Can customer complaints be a nuisance, or are they valuable inputs to product development? (Christiansen et al., 2016). Some empirical evidence points to the observation that some project managers – like the famous architect Frank Gehry – have found strategies to handle this tension and create quite successful outcomes like the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum (Flyvbjerg, 2005). Anecdotical evidence from other creative architects has explained in personal communication, that they often favour a contractor that presents challenges and limitations – within reasonable parameters, as this gives them something to work on, rather than operating in a wide-open empty space. 5. DIS C U S S I O N A N D C O N C L U S I O N The illustrations above show how dilemmas and paradoxes unfold in projects and product development, and this short conclusion will not try to summarize any cross-case learnings from the cases, as their diversity should be evident, but try to discuss some possible ways to understand dilemmas and paradoxes. A remark on the examples and narratives: The role and importance of one of the founders and later CEO Steve Jobs, is, of course, both relevant but maybe exaggerated. The achievements have probably required his unique skills and competencies but also the ability to establish and maintain an increasingly large number of other very skilled and competent people (Kahney, 2013) that was drawn into the network (Akrich et al., 2002a) like Edison did with his famous Menlo Park laboratory (Hargadon & Sutton, 1997). Kathleen Eisenhardt, well known for her many studies of innovation, presents the recent re-interpretations of the genius of Thomas Alva Edison, who acquired a record number of 1.093 patents (Hargadon, 2003:

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ix). For many years Edison was portrayed as a single lone genius, but lately, he is more considered as the inventor and designer of the first industrial research lab – Menlo Park – where he worked closely with a core group of fifteen people. When closing Menlo Park, Edison’s nearly stopped filing any patent applications. He needed his network (Akrich et al., 2002b: 217). Menlo Park was crammed with researchers from all kinds of areas, having a large library representing state-ofthe art knowledge in many areas and a complex forerunner for computers in the form of a huge index paper card-based knowledge system. One of the practices used in Menlo Park was not to throw away things as you can learn a lot even from failures. Reuse of knowledge, bringing ideas from one area to another, was also used intensively. Hargadon (2003) labels it knowledge and technology brokering. Edison pushed for production and outcomes, but not in the ordinary popular sense: From idea to invoice. No, Edison seemed obsessed with producing knowledge that would make a university dean proud today. Or should. One of the most efficient ways to produce new knowledge in a laboratory is to conduct experiments. Edison is quoted for saying: “The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.” (Hargadon, 2003: 151). Besides, Edison was acting as the spokesperson for his ideas, as he needed to get outsiders involved to support and sponsor his work, as he should have stated: Begin with the end, the plan will come later. (Akrich et al., 2002b). First, the conventual reaction on a paradox is to try to remove them, solving them, and understand root-causes. In some instances, it might be possible, but prior research – and the illustrations here – has pointed to the fact that many paradoxes are also a source of a richer understanding of the complexities and potential options for tackling the management challenges, and that we might not need an either/or approach – but to accept a both/and view. Some suggest the use of reframing paradoxical tensions and regard them as potential solutions to engage rather than solve (Gilbert, 2006), maybe by using humour or irony to embrace tensions and unsolvable dilemmas that need to be accepted as a fact of life (Hatch & Ehrlich, 1993). Others suggest that managers can use rhetorical strategies to enable employees to focus on apparently conflicting goals in sequence (Jarzabkowski & Sillince, 2007). Competing, conflicting values and logic do indeed exist within companies, e.g., between designers and marketing people, and that structured and deliberate work on reinforcing a mutual understanding – and acceptance – might be achieved with resourceful sensemaking (Beverland, Micheli & Farrelly, 2016).

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Second, when not being able to solve the dilemma or paradox, an automatic reaction often is to try to strike a balance between the two poles of a tension or identify which conditions suit a certain behaviour, as suggested by the contingency approach to management (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Mintzberg, 1979) e.g., that dynamic environments require organic organizational structures and a stable environment favors a mechanistic structure. Third, one of the overarching observations from the research of successful companies and projects is the fact that these can handle and encompass multiple competing values at the same time and address multiple stakeholders having very diverse expectations. This has been transformed into the concept of ambidextrous organizations. Separating tensions to various units/levels thus becomes a strategy, and Smith and Tushman (2005) suggest differentiating processes at one organizational level and integrating processes at another that may sustain both poles of a tension. Ambidexterity can regard various dimensions (Raisch, Birkinshaw & Probst, 2009) but make it possible for innovative companies to focus both long-term and generate needed short-term profit and being skilled at thinking “both-and” (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2010). The emergence of ambidexterity can be based on a top-down managerial decision, but research indicates that ambidexterity stems from a more complex interactive bottom-up emerging process (Zimmermann, Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2015). Being mostly regarded as a positive thing, structural ambidexterity can also separate companies into loosely-coupled units that never become integrated, e.g. by preventing the company from bringing innovative ideas from the laboratory and experimental projects into contact with the marketing and production (Heracleous et al., 2017). The vast amount of research on organizational effectiveness in 1980s and early 1990s (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1981; Cameron, 1986) found that paradoxes are in themselves paradoxical since the most effective organizations also were those characterized by paradoxes -i.e., contradictions, simultaneous opposites, and incompatibilities (Cameron, 1986). This represents a form of critique or perspective-taking on other management theories, as best-practice approaches and contingency theory, but it does not deem such other approaches useless but raises a yellow flag, a marker that there are indeed not any easy solutions. More recently, research has tried to uncover what managers do when trying to handle these paradoxes and dilemmas. Wendy Smith has uncovered how managers dynamically

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are able to change between supporting opposite demands (Smith, 2014) e.g., as exploration versus exploitation (March, 1991) or complex business models (Smith, Binns & Tushman, 2010). Instead of thinking, either/or the mindset becomes one of both/and. This requires, among other things, the acceptance of multiple cultures, learn from the multiple perspectives on issues, tolerate uncertainty, implement workable temporary fixes, and keep experimenting and act consistently inconsistent. The decision making focus becomes more concerned with a series of decisions rather than on single decisions, as she states “This shifting decision pattern allowed leaders to manage paradox by making choices in response to specific dilemmas in the short term while embracing competing demand inherent in paradoxes in the long term.” (Smith, 2014: 1615). Fourth, the reflections above lead to some final thoughts on the nature of paradox and dilemmas. Why is the concept itself paradoxical and intriguing? Do the opposites in dilemmas and paradoxes indeed have nothing to do with each other? Several brief reflections on the nature of dilemmas and paradoxes will close this chapter. Apparently, small incremental changes can have revolutionary consequences, a process first described by Henderson and Clark (1990) in their treatment of architectural, technological innovation. So exploitative efforts might, in some instances, generate dramatic exploration. Clegg et al. (2009) suggest that the two opposites – for example exploration and exploitation – “enter a mutually supportive relationship when existing resources are used to look for, and take advantage of new opportunities” and that the way “in which this process unfolds is unforeseeable (Levi-Strauss, 1966; Weick, 1993). It can only be determined in retrospect. The recombination of resources or, to be more precise, the bricolage that individuals or groups perform in order to take advantage of opportunities is a situated practice.” (Clegg et al., 2009: 486). Finally, the competing values framework is indeed an achievement, but it also represents a belief that the opposites are in a static, stable relationship at each end of a finite scale. But maybe the opposites – the dilemmas and paradoxes – are better seen in a dynamic relationship, where these are both changing and shifting over time and are mutually needed, as one pole is defined by the other – and vice versa. They are mutually defining each other. We are only able to identify the one with the other. We can’t understand change before we know stability. Stating something about one change requires that we know another – bigger or smaller –

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change. Without being internally focused on our actions and minds, there is no ‘external focus,’ and without differentiation, there is no integration to understand. Bateson (1972: 458) asks the question: “What is it in the territory that gets onto the map?” We know the territory does not get onto the map. That is the central point about which we here are all agreed. Now, if the territory were uniform, nothing would get onto the map except its boundaries, which are the points at which it ceases to be uniform against some larger matrix. What gets onto the map, in fact, is the difference, be it a difference in altitude, a difference in vegetation, a difference in population structure, the difference in surface, or what-ever. Differences are the things that get onto a map. But what is a difference?”

Bateson later answers his own question by stating that the information we are seeking is “a difference that makes a difference” (Bateson, 1972: 460). Thus, we can use dilemmas and paradoxes as guides to understand what are the potential differences – the possible options for management of projects and innovation that we have at our disposal. This can help us understand the options and alternatives, so our array of approaches can be as rich as possible in an increasingly dynamic and complex world, that does not call for standard solutions. I M P L I C AT I O N S F O R P R AC T I C E • The most efficient organizations and projects are those that have fundamental problematic dilemmas and paradoxes – but are able to handle those and adapt to a dynamic mix of constituents. • The combination and strength of the various pull and forces might change over time, and their importance is unpredictable and emerges from situation to situation in a bricolage. • Instead of trying to solve the paradoxes a better strategy can be to improve the ability to handle the cognitive and behavioural stress that comes with such situations. • Secondly, it might be well advised to accept the instability and conflicting demands by adapting to some form of ambidextrous organization, maybe even both with a structural and a cognitive type of solution. • Ambidexterity can lead to a loosely coupled organization that provides the ability to pursuit multiple competing goals having different time frames, but

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MEG A I T A S P UBL IC PROPE R T Y: A C A L L F OR IN N OVAT I V E E VA L UAT IO N ME T HODS Benedic te Rex Fleron and Magnus Rot vit Perlt Hansen MEG A I T AS PUBL IC PROPER T Y: A CAL L FOR INNOVAT I V E E VALUAT ION ME T HODS

A B S T R AC T In this chapter we identify characteristics of a certain type of IT mega project that, when a large majority of the public are supposed to be end-users, can run the risk of becoming impervious to the usual project management best practices, despite the fact that best practices seemed to work well in the process of the project. We coin this type of mega projects as “Volatile Mega IT” due to their nature of being easy to notice but difficult to grasp. This nature makes it very hard to evaluate the results of VMIT projects because the recipients of the evaluation results are entangled or part of the system and this can result in becoming impenetrable to the facts of the system and its evaluation results. Through the characteristics we identify a possible new sublime, a construct of major influence on mega projects, that manifests itself as the negative publicity which a stakeholder group emanates around the IT mega project. In line with the current overall theme of this book we argue that new innovative and practically useful approaches are needed to evaluate IT mega projects that can handle this new sublime in ways that previous methods seem unable. Keywords: Mega Projects, Mega IT, Project Management, Public IT, evaluation 1. I N T RO DU C T I O N Evaluating IT projects is incredibly hard, and current evaluation methods for larger IT projects require dedication and an assumption that the purpose and benefits are somewhat stable through the lifecycle of the project. Evaluation then becomes much harder when IT projects span multiple organizations, multiple groups of end-users, multiple communities of practice, cultures and processes, and span such time durations that the main project owners have been replaced several 75

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times. Some IT projects are born this way and naturally evolve into nightmarish monsters that are difficult to handle through project management practices. Others become costly and huge in scope out of necessity; due to their environmental integration with other systems they cannot be developed incrementally or iteratively and just have to be huge, requiring enormous amounts of organization to overview for whatever project team is responsible. The latter types of projects are also known as “mega projects” (Flyvbjerg, 2014). Mega projects are known for their large scope, large number of users, and large amount of, often diverse, political interests. Mega projects are characterized by having a cost at least $250 million (de Bruijn & Leijten, 2008; Flyvbjerg, 2014). As the scope and time of mega projects are so large, the overall business case and eventual benefits can be difficult to evaluate. Mega projects are often funded and driven by governments or other public organizations and their main purpose is to serve the general public. Examples of mega projects include infrastructure projects such as roads, power lines, bridges and other construction projects. Larger IT projects also fall into this category as they can often be very costly. For the last 70 years or so the concept of mega projects has been used for explaining a large amount of project failures. What is interesting about mega projects, especially with IT projects, is the large number of users that are forced to use the final product of the project, especially when they are publicly funded and performed on a governing level. Such a case is a recent IT project in Denmark, called the Healthcare Platform (HCP), that sought to remove more than 30 legacy systems and replace them with a single, configurable system. The project impacted more than 44,000 end-users across two healthcare regions in Denmark and was aimed to be rolled out to more than 15 different hospitals from May 2016 to November 2018 (Statsrevisorerne, 2018). The interesting part about this IT project was that not only did it impact the direct end-users of the system, it also impacted 2.7 million citizens (potential and actual patients) in one way or the other, resulting in a final count of users of around 50% of the total population of the country of Denmark. In this chapter, we present initial findings of the difficulties of evaluating project successes with this new type of IT mega projects that we call “Volatile Mega IT” (VMIT) projects. The volatility is analogous to that of volatile metals such as mercury that, due to their high pressures, evaporate in room temperature and is completely impossible to grasp. We believe the name is apt because we suggest that the final results of the satisfaction, feedback and general operation of the final system based on the VMIT project are elusive and difficult to evaluate. One of

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the main characteristics is the number of users; a whole geographical demographic is now influenced by the system in one way or another, at one time or another, and with a huge range of personal knowledge and feelings. Below we show how the elusiveness of the IT usage creates gaps where influxes of other influences such as personal narratives or stories covered in the media are hugely influential on the perceptions of the individual and, in turn, the general public. We contribute to the theme of innovation and leadership by identifying areas of mega projects with a high need for more creative, and ultimately innovative, approaches. We pursue the following research question: “What are characteristics of IT mega projects that occur in the public sector?” The chapter is divided as follows. First, we present existing knowledge of the area of mega projects and how research has proposed the major pitfalls of handling these types of projects. Then we present our method divided into two: first the method for the initial study, then we present the method of the secondary study that led us to our results. Then we present the case describing the project process. After this we present our work-in-progress findings from the case and the findings from the comments of the public that we experienced. Finally, we discuss the findings and the problems that we identified and conclude on suggestions for further research on this type of IT mega projects. 2. P R E V I O U S R E S E A RC H What distinguishes mega projects form “normal” projects is that they are complex, large-scale, $250 million+ projects that take many years to develop and build and they involve multiple stakeholders making transformations as they impact millions of people with the intent to change the structure of society or organization; hence, requiring a different approach to project management: “[…] you wouldn’t want conventional project managers to manage mega projects” (Flyvbjerg, 2014: 6). Flyvbjerg (2014) accounts that mega projects are a paradox since mega projects have on one hand become more popular and on the other hand still hold a high, proven failure rate. The performance of mega projects has not improved for the last 70 years measured in terms of success; project delivery on budget, on time, and with the promised benefits. In turn, 9 out of 10 projects have up to 50% cost overruns, are delayed, or have benefit shortfalls. Flyvbjerg (2014: 11) calls this ‘the iron law of mega projects’: “over budget, over time, over and over again”.

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In the literature, it is suggested that the grandiosity of mega projects set some different challenges for managing these types of projects. Complexity is a very common characteristic and points to various complexity aspects; technical complexity (de Bruijn & Leijten, 2008; Greiman, 2013), stakeholder/social complexity (Boateng, Chen & Ogunlana, 2015; de Bruijn & Leijten, 2008; Dyer, 2017), and complexity of risk and uncertainty (Biesenthal, Clegg, Mahalingam & Sankaran, 2018; Giezen, 2012). Priemus (2010) accounts for thirteen decision-making pitfalls of mega projects and how to circumvent them. While de Bruijn & Leijten (2008: 23) mention at least two generically formulated pitfalls in the implementation of mega projects; unmanageable in terms of time or money, and impoverished as to its substance. Dealing with the media is also a central concern because of political interests, agendas, goodwill, taxpayers’ benefits, the legacy of the project (Flyvbjerg 2012). The way to go about managing all these different types of pitfalls depends on where in the process they arise. One could say that dealing with these pitfalls in a timely manner would set you on a course for a successful result. 2.1 T h e I s s u e s o f e v alua t ing I T M e g a P r oje c t s Having a successful result leads us to the focus on project evaluation. In the project management literature, evaluation of projects is often done based on the fulfilment of the project being on time and within budget and scope, also known as the ‘the iron triangle’ (Atkinson, 1999; Greiman, 2015) and in the context of IT projects the evaluation has furthermore focused on the resulting product in terms of information quality, systems quality, and service quality (DeLone & McLean, 2003). As mega projects have a higher degree of complexity and large diversity of the stakeholder group, mega projects need to take other types of evaluation approaches. These approaches include risk management as an evaluation approach (Biesenthal et al., 2018; Boateng et al., 2015; Dyer, 2017), integrating cultural sense-making into risk management (Dyer, 2017), applying institutional theories to view mega projects as a socio-technical endeavor (Biesenthal et al., 2018), or to incorporate an analytical network process approach for the challenges of social, technical, economic, environmental and political (STEEP) risk factors (Boateng et al., 2015). So when Baccarini (1999) argues that the success of the project process and project product are two separate and different concepts, mega projects evaluation may be even more complicated due to the complexity of

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adding multiple levels to process and product. Process and product evaluation thus can be seen as intertwined and temporal because mega projects evolve and new opportunities arise over the span of each project (Greiman, 2015). Some of the main factors include what is noted as “sublimes”; overall raptures of interests that the main stakeholders hold to themselves, often at the cost of good decisionmaking (Flyvbjerg, 2014; Frick, 2008). The 4 main sublimes include: 1) the technical sublime defined as the rapture of making something grand; 2) the political sublime defined as the rapture politicians or main decision-makers get from seeing positive results being shown to the public; 3) the economic sublime defined as the rapture businesses will reap by creating new jobs and more financial opportunities; 4) the aesthetic sublime defined as the rapture designers, artists and creative people receive from designing, building and using something on a large scale. In doing so, one would recognize that a mega project can be perceived both as a success and a failure at the same time as the outcome of the project is in the eye of the beholder. All sublimes have some impact on the project process or the project result in some sense. 3. M E T H O D We have taken an interpretive qualitative approach based on the HCP case and the empirical foundation on a previously published article (Fleron, Hansen & Pries-Heje, 2019). 3 workshops with practitioners and academics were held and supplemented with the narratives of 4 main actors that participated in the implementation of the healthcare platform. The previously published paper also included approximately 10 (central) news article clippings that were coded and analysed for barriers and opportunities. We have furthermore presented the results of the article in 4 different workshop settings where the results were presented, discussed and criticized. Two of the workshops were in academical settings (one network group and one conference setting) and two of the workshops were in practitioner settings with highly experienced project managers present in a discussion. The results of the workshops were consolidated with notes (as much as was possible) and debriefings among the authors afterwards where rich notes were gathered as well. 4 additional newspaper stories have been continuously incorporated into the empirical findings as well.

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EMPIRICAL FOUNDATION

UNIT OF ANALYSIS

LENGTH

PURPOSE

Workshop 1

25 practitioners

360 minutes

Gathering narratives from stakeholders

Workshop 2

20 scholars and practitioners

240 minutes

Suggestions for coping strategies

Workshop 3

35 experienced project managers

120 minutes

Lessons learnt

Document analysis

14 newspaper articles

Approx. 20 pages

Gathering failure stories

Informant interview A

Healthcare Platform project manager

180 minutes

Gathering failure stories

Informant interview B

Healthcare Platform implementation coordinator

180 minutes

Gathering failure stories

Informant interview C

Healthcare Platform technical user

120 minutes

Gathering failure stories

Informant interview D

Healthcare Platform project technical lead

60 minutes

Gathering failure stories

Workshop 4

6 project mgmt. researchers

60 minutes

Gathering feedback from failure and success aspects

Workshop 5

16 project mgmt. practitioners

30 minutes

Gathering feedback from failure and success aspects

Workshop 6

20+ researchers with mixed IT project mgmt. knowledge

30 minutes

Gathering feedback from failure and success aspects

Workshop 7

6 project mgmt. practitioners

45 minutes

Gathering feedback from failure and success aspects

Ta b l e 1. T h e e m p i r i c a l d a t a c o l l e c t i o n .

The data were coded and categorized into stories and specific types of these (failure or successes), ranging from product, process or organizational failures, and further refined into responsible actors, concrete issues etc. The codes were uncovered through debriefings after the workshops and through review of notes and recordings. The codes were performed on low levels of the text and has yet to be

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categorized on an abstract level as of writing. In the results section of this chapter, we will show a sampling of the most recurring failure stories as the results of the initial coding and how they corresponded to success stories. We do note that the findings are still work in progress and prone to change when the analysis is more developed. 4. C A S E DE S C RI P T I O N In Denmark, five regions and the governing body of the regional councils are responsible for all treatments provided by the Danish healthcare system which in 2010 established a regional healthcare IT organization tasked with focusing on 24 key performance indicators for IT supported healthcare in Denmark. The Healthcare Platform (HCP) was by far the largest investment in IT in a Danish healthcare context. Two of the five regions invested approx. 2.8 billion DKK (a total of approx. $430 million) in a system estimated to replace some 30 different preparatory systems, changing the work practices of more than 44,000 employees and affecting about half of the Danish population (2,5 million citizens). From these descriptions, the HCP project adhered to the definitions of an IT Mega project in terms of the mega project framework (Greiman, 2013) and the sublimes at play in a mega project (Flyvbjerg, 2014; Frick, 2008). The implementation of the HCP was done in five phases (Fleron et al., 2019) commencing spring 2016 and ending with the last phase by the end of 2017 (Statsrevisorerne, 2018). In view of the mega project framework, many strategies were in play to ensure the success of the HCP project. Two of the most important strategies were a) a strategy aligned with the vision of the project owner, which was to ensure a single system solution for more efficient work procedures at the hospitals and increase the quality of patient treatments, and b) a strategy focusing on managing time and budget in accordance to a cost-benefit analysis of meeting the three-fold requirements; system merging, increased quality of patient treatments, and efficient work procedures (Statsrevisorerne, 2018). The project management theory and practices in place in the HCP project was a classical textbook approach with a program steering committee and a joint program organization for the two regions with two main programs (source: Informant A) and the implementation has been coined as a ‘big bang’ but was more accurately a so-called phased implementation (Fleron et al., 2019). The ways in which the project managers went about exercising the theories in practice was much more complex and many cop-

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ing strategies were set in motion in order to manage IT mega project (for further elaboration on these strategies see Fleron et al., 2019). Of relevance was the technological sublime of pushing the standard of technological functionality and superiority in terms of implementing a well-known technology with a high quality, making it technically possible to widen the usage of the system to other sectors and user groups in a very short time span (source: Informant D). Furthermore, the political sublime was also highly dominant from the onset as the project seemed to be a fantastic story that the local politicians could benefit from. Nevertheless, the story turned around and became quite the albatross around the neck. The public awareness and interest in the HCP project began already back in 2012 (Røhl & Nielsen, 2019) before the decision in 2013 to invest in the new healthcare system by Epic (Fleron et al., 2019), and the media stories have been very critical and rather one-sided towards the HCP project (Røhl & Nielsen, 2019). 5. P R E L I M I N A R Y F I N DI N G S In the following we will present the preliminary results based on our experiences of presenting the results to practitioners and academics, as well as trying to handle and do research on the IT project itself. The results are divided into four main characteristics of the type of mega IT project that we call “Volatile Mega IT” projects. 5.1 C o n c ur r e n t s u c c e s s an d f ailur e The main findings from the initial article results was that defining success and failure is not so easily done (Fleron, Hansen & Pries-Heje, 2019). These success and failure stories followed us through the presentations of our results, and, in many cases, fell to deaf ears. In the following, we present a vignette of the first characteristic of the “black and white” perspectives about the HCP project or product from the most common failure stories that were presented to us by workshop participants and how they could be counted by more “grey gradience” responses based on the data from our informants and document analysis.

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STORIES OF “BLACK AND WHITE” FAILURES PRESENTED AT WORKSHOPS

ANSWERS GIVEN SHOWING A “GREY GRADIENCE RESPONSE”

SOURCE OF THE GREY GRADIENCE RESPONSES

S3: users were never involved.

A3: users were invited to huge presentations where they could vote on the functionality and prioritization of these by show of hands with green and red cards.

Informant A, B, D

S9: it was not possible to reconfigure the user interface.

It was not only possible; it was also easy. The political decision, however, was to consolidate levels of standardized user interfaces across two regions, meaning that decisions to change something through the levels of use from user, to departmental, to hospital, to clinical area, to regional area is a long-winded process. It was done with the specific intentions of streamlining the system for updates, security-issues, and localized work practices.

Informant A, B and C

S11: 2 years in and the initial end-user hospitals still have not received essential updates or configurations that they have.

On this scale any implementation approach will spawn tradeoffs. The phased implementation approach required very few configurations to be made between implementations to keep the variables steady. The tradeoffs here were that the first waves would experience very few fixes and immediate feedback which would create fatigue.

Informant A, B, C

S12: the go-live events were disasters!

Each go-live event gradually increased in scale and scope and each go-live event spawned completely new issues and rarely the same issues.

Informant A, B and C

S15: the HCP project implementation was a complete failure.

A15: The implementation was done on time, on budget and within scope. All users were informed (some more poorly than others) and user resources were actually allocated to the project and removed from other change projects.

Informant A, B, D

Ta b l e 2. S h o w i n g a n e x c e r p t o f t h e t o t a l o f 16 f a i l u r e s t o r i e s t h a t w e r e i d e n t i f i e d a n d t h e i r possible rebut tals.

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What became apparent (and which was also found in the previously published article (Fleron et al., 2019)) was that the perception of project success was eerily reminiscent of the “Schrödinger’s Cat” paradox; the HCP project was both a success and a failure at the same time. What was surprising was how outspoken these perceptions were no matter which stakeholders were asked. Table 2 summarizes the aspects related to failure that were given during the workshops as well as drawn out during the interviews. What is interesting is that the various informants all had explanations and answers for these failure aspects. While it is impossible to verify the validity or veracity of the failure aspects brought up, the ease of which the questions could be tackled or at least answered and provide some context to the setting was quite astonishing. During the presentation workshops, the focus of debating the project as a sensational failure quickly dimmed when the answers were given. Now, this does not mean that the perceptions of failure were wrong, or that nothing could have been done about these aspects. Though we believe it does speak quantities to the scope and scale of the project that the failure aspects were so broad and so widely believed. Some of the stories focused on the technical parts of the project, others on the quality of the product, and even more on the implementation process and the handling. It was difficult to decide who were to blame, though the failure aspects certainly held a certain learning value for the project of this size. 5. 2 A c o ll e c t i v e, man da t o r y u s e r b a s e The second characteristic that became clear upon presenting the results was the deepfelt impact that the project had done on those in the audience. Everyone was in some way impacted. The impacts took three general shapes: A) Either the participants of the audience were potential end-users themselves by simply living in one of the regions where the HCP system was implemented. B) Or they had friends or family who worked as clinical personnel, or who had been recent patients where they had experienced the personnel use the system. C) Or they had read about the project and system in the general media, including formal press releases or social media. The characteristic was further enhanced by the impact of the system being a healthcare system and hence users being ‘forced’ to be on the receiving end of the system. With other types of IT systems, one would most likely not care whether a system that a service organization uses worked well or not, as long as the service provided is of high quality. Another solution would be to simply not choose the

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service organization based on hearsay or reviews. With the HCP, this was not an option at all. One could not simply choose another hospital (although possible to choose treatment at a private hospital, this is only an option when the public hospitals cannot live up to certain quality requirements such as waiting times or other types of treatment) and all patients were by definition bound to the system simply based off their geographical address. The impact that the system was rumoured to have, through the press or through these personal anecdotes, was huge, hence greatly skewing the general perception fear of becoming a patient or fearing for one’s relatives when they became patients. 5. 3 M e dia 2.0 e x p o s ur e f u e lling v o c al min o r i t ie s The third characteristic of VMIT is that the projects are covered strongly by the media and over time, often with a sensational and very emotional angle. The news coverage of the HCP has, at the time of writing, been massive, and massively in favor of producing failure stories with a sensational twist. A recent overview study showed that a large percentage of all media news coverage from official formal news bureaus were angled in a negative light towards either the HCP project or the product. Social media groups and discussion also contributed by influencing the general media in attempts to ‘go viral’ and succeeded. One chief physician even initiated and established a formal association called “Sundhedsplatformen Nej Tak” (translated into “HCP – no thanks”) and gained more than 5000 followers on social media. However, that is equivalent to about 11% of the affected employees and only about 0.2% of the citizens potentially getting in contact with the system which does put the nay-sayers at a small spot with a loudspeaker. These media stories impacted the project very strongly and the organization behind the HCP had to constantly discuss how to handle each new news story in a strategic manner. One of the informants noted that she and her manager, prior to launching the kick-off presentation and introduction of the 5th wave of the HCP, had to respond to the failure stories that had been given by the media and address the stories as honestly as they could in order to cope with any doubts that the users would have (source: Informant B). Common for all informants was also that the dialogues they had heard of and even initiated themselves with users were far from as negative as the media and social media had made it out to be. Some users tried to cope as best as they could with the new work practices provided by the platform, while others saw positive

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potential in the platform. Two of the informants noted that in their experience only very few users were upset enough to excise explicit criticism towards the system while most were happy to learn that they had to work differently with the system and they were satisfied. Especially the physicians would be critical but mainly because they were the ones that needed to change their work practices the most. 5.4 U ng r a s p ab le quali t y e v alua t io n The fourth characteristic was the public property mentality towards the HCP project; everyone held strong opinions about the HCP (often also very negative/ critical). Hence, having a rational and emotion-free discussion obviously ended up being impossible, yet strongly attainable. Since everyone was impacted by the system (the authors included), the discussion would at times end up creating more polarization than unity. The pursuit of knowledge as we as researchers were so eager to find was more or less muddled down into discussions of who wanted to be right by presenting their own version of facts as truths. It meant that any attempt at trying to grasp at a part of the project would instantly be changed. A focus on the process of the implementation as a huge learning opportunity would or could quickly be changed to a focus on the lack of usable interfaces. A focus on the high configurability of the user interface would quickly have its focus be changed to the lack of financial and personal benefits. It was, and by the time of writing still is, an endless battle of opinions on a political and strategic level, rather than a factual presentation which, to a large degree, should be the job of researchers. 6 . DIS C U S S I O N A N D C O N C L U S I O N So far, we have presented the term “Volatile Mega IT” projects with four main characteristics: 1) the “black/white” failure stories versus the “grey gradience” counter responses, 2) the close and personal impact of HCP (to everyone), 3) strong (sensational) media coverage, and 4) public property mentality that all plays an tremendous importance for the evaluation of such huge projects, all making VMIT projects slippery to get a certain hold of. What seems to be the case with the HCP project is that all the four characteristics have spun into a negative spiral where the “black/white” failure stories have been of sensational interest to the media which, with the strong coverage, has

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turned the mega project into a feeling of public property which in turn accounts for the close and personal impact of the project on the citizens. From a research point of view, this should have been dealt with in terms of an adequate problem analyses, an explicit way to deal with contested information, and the “right” scope of the project in the decision-making process (Priemus, 2010). During the run of the HCP project, concerns of the multitude of complexities could probably have been addressed more effectively. It is not clear how well prepared the project managers were in managing the stakeholder and social complexity, where it seems like the project could have benefitted from taking different cultural perspectives in the organization into account (Biesenthal et al., 2018; Dyer, 2017). During the implementation, resources spent on the users’ side seem to have been underestimated and in part have been the root cause of the challenges faced in the HCP project. The challenges could in terms of implementation be coined to an impoverishment of the project substance with its over-emphasis on the technical and systematic implementation and less so on the social and work organizational implementation. Even the management of the media could have been better managed instead of leaving the local project managers with the task of dealing with an ever-growing media involvement. We cannot rule out that even though all of the above had been dealt with accordingly, the public property mentality does not seem to be accounted for in the literature in terms of how to deal with it. Flyvbjerg (2012) does mention how to utilize the media in a constructive way as researchers and potentially as project managers. However, it remains uncertain if doing so would actually prohibit the emergence of the public property mentality. What remains is that the literature does not seem to have a suggestion for how to prevent nor manage the public property mentality phenomenon. We may argue that this is yet a sublime in terms of end-user dissatisfaction. The present theory on the sublimes focuses on a specific group that will benefit from the rapture they gain due to mere size of the mega project; it is the biggest, fastest, longest, most innovative, etc. that the technical actors have developed, the politician have sanctioned, the business people have profited from, and the architects have designed. However, we claim that there could also be a rapture for some end-users from turning the mega project into a public property and thereby keeping the (negative in our case) spiral going forcing a huge amount of resources spent on their agenda instead of letting other alternative voices be heard. The indications of this sublime would then be the four characteristics that we have accounted for.

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What we have presented here is only a single case from a very specific and high public interest domain which potentially affects all citizens at one point or the other during their lifetime (and often more times than once) and to which there is no alternative. What needs to be studied further is whether our four characteristics also come into play in other types of mega projects. Are the four characteristics general for the healthcare domain and what is the relation to enabling the public property sublime? Had the domain been public transportation, the stakes would most likely not be equally high. Take another mega project recently finished in Denmark: the extension of a new metro line in the capital of Copenhagen. This project influenced many citizens for many years with noise discomforts, workers with industrial disputes, and political debates. While the metro project was covered in the media multiple times with a similar failure aspect to the stories, it never garnered the same type of momentum in terms of a public property mentality. This was most likely due to peoples’ lives not being dependent on the (perceived) success of the mega project which may explain the absence of our fifth sublime in the metro project. During the retrospective interviews, we gained a vast amount of information, primarily information on the past process that was outdated but not much on the current state of the second reconfiguration and relaunch. As such, there was still a need for anonymization of sources, checking and reviewing quotes and even hiding accounts due to political conflicts. This need only further shows the difficulty of trying to evaluate such VMIT projects. How can we even rely on the information given to us when the users are either fearing for their jobs, fearing for themselves, or have a vested interest in skewing information on an overall political agenda? How can evaluators even present information if it will be rejected, reinterpreted, dismissed and misconstrued on such scales? We do not doubt the necessity of doing so nor the likelihood of the possibility of being able to do so given enough time. However, this would probably only happen after new political leaders have been elected or the system has been part of the culture of the work settings. This is usually par for the course for minor IT systems. However, on the scales of a VMIT project, we do believe that the public deserves faster evaluation and faster results than have previously been possible. The public are, in the end, the taxpayers for such systems and reversing the direction on the size and magnitude of such huge colossi is nigh impossible to do. Implications for practice in terms of this new type of mega IT projects indicate that a much stronger collaboration and connection with the public and the users

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are needed. Approaches that allow long-term effects and benefits to be documented over time and revealed as the project goes can also be significantly important to perform. In order to evaluate Volatile mega IT, one might have to look to parties that are not influenced at all by them, such as international consultancies. However, we still run into the issue that evaluations need some kind of initial benchmark to compare against and the main business case will often seem to change depending on the frequency of changing project owners or even as more knowledge of the mega IT becomes more apparent. One might argue that practitioners must be very specific and explicit in the versioning of the wandering business cases. So, in answering our research question; “What are characteristics of IT mega projects that occur in the public sector?” we have found that when IT mega projects take the form of Volatile Mega IT projects carrying four characteristics and hold the potential for a fifth sublime in addition to the existing theory on mega projects. The characteristics and whether the fifth sublime will influence the project can be very challenging to anticipate, prevent, and manage during and after the course of the project. If challenged in time, project owners and managers, in the hand of the public property sublime, can let lesser prominent voices gain influence and stop (and hopefully reverse) the negative spiral of public news spinning out of control. Our findings should be viewed in the light of identifying a new area that is both ripe for practitioner and researcher scrutiny (if one is able to come up with evaluation methods that can take into account the characteristics of VMIT it will be like striking gold). As such, we urgently call for new innovative approaches to evaluate IT mega projects that can handle this new sublime in ways that previous methods seem unable. REFERENCES Atkinson, R. (1999). Project management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria. International Journal of Project Management, 17(6), 337-342. Baccarini, D. (1999). The logical framework method for defining project success. Project Management Journal, 30(4), 25-32. Biesenthal, C., Clegg, S., Mahalingam, A., & Sankaran, S. (2018). Applying institutional theories to managing mega projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), 43-54. Boateng, P., Chen, Z., & Ogunlana, S.O. (2015). An analytical network process model for risks prioritisation in mega projects. International Journal of Project Management, 33(8), 1795-1811.

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de Bruijn, H. & Leijten, M. (2008). Management characteristics of mega-projects. In H. Priemus, B. Flyvbjerg & B. van Wee (eds.), Decision-Making on Mega-Projects: Cost-Benefit Analysis, Planning and Innovation (pp. 23-39). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. DeLone, W.H. & McLean, E.R. (2003). The DeLone and McLean Model of information system success: A ten-year update. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(4), 9-30. Dyer, R. (2017). Cultural sense-making integration into risk mitigation strategies towards mega project success. International Journal of Project Management, 35(7), 1338-1349. Fleron, B.R., Hansen, M.R.P., & Pries-Heje, J. (2019). Is Success in IT Projects a Fata Morgana ? – A Case Study of a Large Healthcare IT Project. 10th Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems, August 11-14, Nokia, Finland. Flyvbjerg, B. (2012). Why mass media matter and how to work with them: Phronesis and mega projects. In B. Flyvbjerg, T. Landman & S. Schram (eds.), Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis (pp. 95-121). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (2014). What you should know about megaprojects and why: An overview. Project Management Journal, 45(2), 6-19. Frick, K.T. (2008). The cost of the technological sublime: Daring ingenuity and the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. In H. Priemus, B. Flyvbjerg & B. van Wee (eds.), Decision-Making on Mega-Projects (pp. 239-262). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Giezen, M. (2012). Keeping it simple? A case study into the advantages and disadvantages of reducing complexity in mega project planning. International Journal of Project Management, 30(7), 781-790. Greiman, V.A. (2013). Megaproject Management: Lessons on Risk and Project Management from The Big Dig. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Greiman, V.A. (2015). Evaluating megaprojects: What constitutes success? Rethinking Infrastructure: Voices from the Global Infrastructure Initiative, 2(May), 14-17. Priemus, H. (2010). Mega-projects: Dealing with pitfalls. European Planning Studies, 18(7), 10231039. Røhl, U.B.U. & Nielsen, J.A. (2019). Sundhedsplatformen i modvind: En analyse af aktørernes teknologiforståelser i danske medier. Samfundslederskab i Skandinavien, 34(3), 178-206. Statsrevisorerne (2018). Beretning om Sundhedsplatformen. Copenhagen: Statsrevisorerne.

T R AC ING T HE FOO T S T E P S OF RE F L EC T I V E PR AC T IC E IN PRO JEC T M A N AG E ME N T E DUC AT IO N Julie Bladt Goodall and Timo Leimbach T R ACING T HE FOO T S T EPS OF REF L EC T I V E PR AC T ICE IN PRO JEC T M A N AGEMEN T EDUCAT ION

A B S T R AC T This chapter analyses the development and current status of the concept of reflective practice in project management education. Our analysis finds the area highly fragmented, based on a staged skills-acquisition model, and lacking diversity, resulting in the impediment of the conceptual development of reflective practice as well as its operationalization into the classroom. The over-emphasis on expertise risks overlooking the development of more critical aspects of reflective practice and in particular ignores reflective practice for novices. We pose potentials for the extension of reflective practice towards alternative competency development models, more critical and emancipatory ambitions, as well as pursuing input from non-traditional disciplines. 1. I N T RO DU C T I O N Reflective practice has been bestowed a central, albeit abstract, role as vehicle for advancement and innovation of project management (PM) practice to deal with complexity and ambiguity. The question of how to develop reflexive capabilities becomes central for these transformational intentions to “crystalize” into project practice – and constitutes the central theme for this chapter. For decades now, the concept of reflective practice has been of interest in many professional areas. However, the concept is widely applied and often differently understood, and so takes on vastly different forms in the various fields of adoption (Finlay, 2008). PM is a field where the wider application of the concept has been more recent, as a result of the widening scope of PM into ‘soft’ skills and project leadership. As projects have become a widespread form of organizing activities in business (Schoper, Wald, Ingason & Fridgeirsson, 2018), not only in traditional areas such as engineering, construction or IT, but also starting to per91

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meate into other fields ranging from healthcare to performing arts, as “contemporary Zeitgeist” (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2016: 1), its advancement becomes ever more significant. Research in PM initially had a strong focus on failure and success studies, which could only partially explain many of the shortcomings of the existing models, tools and practices. The rising levels of complexity and ambiguity, along with the broadening scope of the discipline, is therefore, by some, understood to call for very different approaches than the traditional. Consequently, recent years have seen an abundance of new research streams in the PM field, which are more pluralistic and critical (Morris, Pinto & Söderlund, 2013). This includes for example different streams such as the Scandinavian school of project studies (Sahlin-Andersson & Söderholm, 2002), the rethinking project management network (Winter, Smith, Morris & Cicmil, 2006), the making projects critical approach (Hodgson & Cicmil, 2006) and practice studies in projects (Blomquist, Hällgren, Nilsson & Söderholm, 2010). The rethinking network considers project management education (PM-E) to be a key axis for the further development in PM, stressing the development of reflective practice as one of five directions for future research to advance the discipline (Crawford, Morris, Thomas & Winter, 2006; Winter et al., 2006). Also, others have argued for PM-E as an important aspect of the further evolution of the discipline (Lalonde, Bourgault & Findeli, 2012), in particular the pivotal role of the reflective practitioner for overcoming theory/practice dichotomies positions education and development as fundamental to developing the discipline (Sage, Dainty & Brookes, 2010). As shown by the review of Svejvig and Andersen (2015) on the research related to the rethink-network, PM-E and reflective practice also plays a central role moving forward and transforming critical intentions into actual practice. As the codified knowledge of the professional associations has difficulties integrating this new, more subjectivist and critical knowledge (Morris, Crawford, Hodgson, Shepherd & Thomas, 2006), we find higher education an appropriate site to investigate the influence of these newer research streams and the concept of reflective practice. In our investigation we are, however, aware that the standardization and rigidity of the PMBoKs and concurrent certification system remain a central influence on PM-E. Firstly, the dominant role of best practices as core of the knowledge base, second the role of experience as the central learning approach, thirdly the importance of association membership, and fourthly the

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demand for regular renewal of certifications underlining the role of knowledge maintenance (Goodall & Leimbach, 2018). Against this backdrop, the overall research question of this chapter is how reflective practice unfolds within PM-E and how this development relates to the nature of the discipline and its dominant pedagogies. The reason for doing so is that the continuous spread of the project format in a globalized world has led to a stronger focus on innovative projects, in particular in relation to developments of digital transformation. The desired innovative outcomes of these projects range from new working processes to new business models, which entail a strong degree of complexity and uncertainty. Navigating these conditions requires new forms of project leadership that take an outset in self-reflection and, through the combination of practical sense and critical thought, enable a continuous development of leadership competencies (Jónasson & Ingason, 2019). Therefore, reflective practice has not only academic, but also practical, relevance. In order to respond to our research question, we undertake a systematic review of literature on the current state of PM-E research and in particular analyse the development and utilization of the concept of reflective practice. More than reviewing how reflective practice is defined and discussed in research, we apply a holistic approach to understanding the development of reflective practice within PM-E. Therefore, we here shortly introduce the concept of reflective practice, and how we presume to both look for where it is, and where it is not. 1.1 T h e o r e t i c al b a c k g r o un d The concept of reflective practice is generally attributed to Donald Schön and his 1983 book The Reflective Practitioner. Schön’s interpretation builds on John Dewey’s (1933) conception of reflective inquiry, and the concept is closely tied to his understandings of the centrality of experience for learning. Argyris and Schön (1974) contributed with the distinction between single and double loop learning, the latter to investigate underlying values and assumptions of a given problem to come up with a new solution. In 1983 and 1987 Schön added the distinction between reflection-on-action (referring to Dewey’s reflective inquiry), and reflection-in-action. With reflection-in-action, Schön wanted to highlight the, mainly unconscious or tacit, reflective process in which the practitioner, surprised by an unanticipated reaction to his routine behaviour, listens to the situation’s backtalk. It involves an in-the-situation questioning of the assumptions of his knowing-inaction that led to the current surprising situation. Through making sense of the

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new problem setting, the practitioner can reframe his understanding and decide on new experimental action. The process is in-the-moment, but might be followed by reflection-on-action to explicate a construction of what happened, and how knowing-in-action has changed accordingly. The concept and developmental understanding of reflective practice has gained great importance and attention within disciplines that are closely tied to a specific profession and, therefore, emphasize the importance of practice as inherently social, such as nursing, medicine and education. In order to trace the footprints of reflective practice, we must understand both drivers and obstacles for its development, and therefore, must look both for where it is, and where it is not. Like Cicmil (2006), we use Habermas’ (1972) distinction of knowledge-constitutive interests as “technical”, “practical” and “emancipatory” to scaffold a categorization for the main research assumptions in the reviewed papers. Here we assume a systematic relationship between the logical structures of a science with the pragmatic structures of possible application of the generated information. Where the technical domain represents, what is criticized as “technical training”, reflective practice can be interpreted as combining practical and emancipatory aims. Table 1 shows how we propose to connect Cicmil’s (2006) interpretation of Habermas’ knowledge-constitutive interests with main pedagogies and learning outcomes related to reflection. KNOWLEDGE CONSTITUTIVE INTEREST

TECHNICAL

PRACTICAL

EMANCIPATORY

Focus

Best practice (hard)

Social/situated (soft)

Power/critical

Pedagogy

Instrumental

Experiential

Critical

Learning outcomes

Acquiring (toolset)

Adapting (toolset) to context

Questioning (toolset)

Research paradigm

Functionalist/ positivist

Interpretative/ constructivist

Radical/critical

Ta b l e 1. I n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e t h e o r y o f k n o w l e d g e c o n s t i t u t i v e i n t e r e s t s (a d a p t e d f r o m C i c m i l, 2 0 0 6).

So, even though we might not find the specific term of reflective practice invoked, we could look for signifiers of these knowledge constitutive interests. Further, we can use the distinctions to discuss different interpretations of the concept, as well

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as critically assess superficial referencing that does not necessarily mean that reflective practice is actually in focus, much less applied, in the chapter – as its application would need to have an impact on the research approach itself. 2. M E T H O D O L O G Y

Identification

In order to trace the footprints of reflective practice within the current academic state of affairs in PM-E, we decided for a largely systematic approach of literature search, review and analyze according to Onwuegbuzie and Frels (2016) and Hart (2018) as well as inspired by the approach of Svejvig and Andersen (2015).

Records identified through database searching (n = 1074)

Sorting and main characteristics

Screening and eligibility

Records after duplicates and irrelevant removed (n = 204)

Records after publi. year 2000-2018 (n = 182)

Records after reading full papers (n = 150)

Direction of PM-E (n = 28)

Motivation Main assumptions: · research approach · learning approach Research method Level and discipline

Educational development (n = 24)

Motivation Main assumptions: · research approach · learning approach Research method Level and discipline

Teaching methods (n = 98)

Motivation Main assumptions: · research approach · learning approach Research method Level and discipline Type of teaching method

F i g u r e 1. P R I S M A - i n s p i r e d f l o w d i a g r a m o f t h e r e v i e w p r o c e s s ( Tr i c c o e t a l ., 2 018).

While not completely linear, our process can be conceptualized through the stages of identification (including scoping and searching), screening and eligibil-

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ity, and sorting and analysis, as visualized in Figure 1. Even though many reviews within PM focus exclusively on the main journals of the field, we decided not to limit the range of source journals, based on our previous knowledge of the topic as highly dispersed (Leimbach & Goodall, 2017). We used the search terms “project management education” and project management teaching”, and performed the searches in four major databases (Scopus, Ebsco, Sciencedirect and ProQuest1), inspired by Svejvig and Andersen (2015), including only peer-reviewed journal articles. We then performed a screening of the 1074 search results for relevance to PM-E, leaving us with 150 relevant results on our list. Furthermore, we sorted the papers to discern important patterns, agreeing on three main groupings similar to a vision-strategy-tactics logic: the direction of the discipline and corresponding competencies/skillset with 28 papers, educational development of programs and courses with 24 papers, and specific teaching methods, tools and practices with 98 papers. In the process of reading into the full papers, we coded, as relevant and feasible within each grouping, for motivation, main assumptions as to the field of PM and learning respectively – including the relation to the discussion on reflective practices in PM – research method, educational level, discipline, and teaching method. In the groupings, we mapped the different ideas and themes and tried to identify patterns between the different characteristics (Hart 2018) in order to draw a characterization of the influence, or lack therefore, and interpretations of reflective practice, as well as patterns that might help to explain this. 3. A N A LY S I S This section will first analyse the basic characteristics of the reviewed papers, and the identified groupings, as well as a thematic discussion of the concept of reflective practice. 3.1 Ba s i c m e t r i c s When looking at the year of publication, in Figure 2, the research area of PM-E takes shape from 2006, congruent with the Rethink network’s call for reflective 1 We performed separate searches for “project management education” OR “educat* project manage*” and “teaching project manage*” OR “project management teaching” in ALL fields.

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practice (Crawford et al., 2006), and seems to have peaked in 2011-15 with 12 – 18 papers per year. The smaller peak in 2008 is consistent with the IJPM special issue on “Excellence in teaching & learning for Project Management” as well as the launch of the 3rd PM focused journal (IJMPB), and the peak in 2012 with the PMJ special issue on “PMI Research and Education Conference 2012”. 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 2000

2001

2002

2003 2004

Group Directions

2005 2006

2007

2008

2009 2010 2011

Group Educational Development

2012 2013 2014

2015 2016

2017 2018

Group Teaching Methods

F i g u r e 2. O v e r v i e w o f c h r o n o l o g i c a l d e v e l o p m e n t o f P M - E r e s e a r c h b y g r o u p i n g s .

Size, publication and discipline

The directions group contains 28 papers and is focused on the overall direction of the discipline by pointing towards the (new) competencies needed, the failings of the current educational system to provide these, and short examples of how to solve this problem. The educational development group contains 24 papers and is concerned mainly with procedures or structures of developing programs and courses within PM. The teaching methods group is by far the largest group with 98 papers and is focused on teaching methods and tools, exploring how to actually teach PM.

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Publication is highly dispersed, with the 3 main PM journals responsible for 40 papers, but all of 69 source journals represented with only 1-3 papers. We further find a disconnect between the groupings in that the papers in the direction and educational development groups are most represented in the main PM journals, and the papers on teaching methods is the most dispersed and mainly published in journals on learning and education. The authors’ disciplines are largely traditional to the history of PM, with 41% coming from engineering, 30% from business and 23% from IT. The discipline of business is most represented in the papers on the direction of PM, engineering in papers on educational development, and IT is relatively overrepresented in papers on teaching methods. METRICS

DIRECTIONS AND SKILLSET

EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

TEACHING METHODS

Number of papers

28

24

98

Source journals

14

15

59

Eng.

39%

63%

36%

Bus.

43%

21%

29%

IT

14%

13%

30%

Techno-rational

7

5

98

Socio-technical

9

13

12

6

Author discipline

Research directions

Critical

-

Ta b l e 2. b a s i c m e t r i c s o v e r v i e w.

Re s e a r c h a p p r o a c h

The direction group has by far the largest influence of critical research streams, with more moderate influence in the mainly socio-technical educational development group, and none in the dominantly techno-rational teaching methods group, signaling a very limited or lose coupling with the critical debates in the first two groups. Papers in the teaching methods group use some general references to the other groups for situating their choice of teaching method, such as changes in skill requirements brought on by new organizational formats, techno-

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logical development, globalization or projectification, as well as a general educational influences towards student-centered learning models, as well as rising student numbers and the implementation of the Bologna process. M e t h o d, d a t a a n d e d u c a t i o n a l l e v e l

There are distinct differences in the methods of the 3 groups, where the direction papers are mainly conceptual or skill surveys, educational development papers are largely case studies, and teaching method papers are developments or evaluations of specific teaching methods. The direction group relies heavily on practitioner input, whereas the other two groups favour student evaluations. A common characteristic is that the authors rely on their own experience as the main source of data. Any acknowledgements of the relation of the author to the course design or students are perceived to have positive “deep insight”-effects for the research. There are no considerations as to the possible bias involved in evaluating one’s own design choices and performance. With regards to educational level, we can see a distinction, where the direction and educational development group papers are more focused towards advanced education, such as MBA’s, the teaching methods group is concerned almost exclusively with undergraduate and graduate courses. L e a r n i ng a p p r o a c h

Papers in the direction and educational development groups generally ascribe to an experiential learning approach2, favored especially by the critical papers, which also tend to be more explicit, consistent with the critical research streams’ increased focus on learning and sensemaking (Sage et al., 2010). In the teaching methods group, specific learning theories are mostly used as a casual reference employed for justification in the introductory sections. Much more distinguishable in the teaching methods group, was the types of teaching methods where the most dominant groupings were simulations – either virtual (37/98) or class-based (12/98), e-learning (25/98), PBL (14/98), and live-cases (11/98). There is a notable correspondence between authors from IT and engineering with papers on simulations, whereas authors from business and non-traditional disciplines are mainly 2 Referring in general to some combination of Schön’s reflection in-action/reflective practice (1987/1991), Kolb’s learning cycle (1984) and Dreyfus & Dreyfus’ framework for developing from novice to expert (1980).

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interested in e-learning, live-cases and PBL. Also, the numbers show a growing importance of educational-IT driven methods, coherent with the general rise in of these, risking however the development of soft skillsets, as many, for example virtual games, focus on “hard” aspects (Rumeser & Emsley, 2018). Motivations

The papers in the direction group agree to an increased need for the development of soft skills in PM-E, however placing themselves along a continuum from moderate to comprehensive in their assessment of the implications of such a finding. Where those of a mainly technical-rational approach will add soft skills “on top” of covering PMBoK topics, either through an alignment of the curriculum to industry needs or an increased focus on transferable and relational skills, those of a more critical approach call for a more pervasive rethinking, which will be further explored in section 3.2 in discussions on the concept of reflective practice. All of the papers in the educational development group focus on developing educational programs or courses that are relevant to practice, although they differ in their conception of relevance in two distinct groupings. Again, we see a link between the general assumptions of the papers and their motivations for educational development. Those of a technical-rational approach, covering all the papers with a professional focus and industry/academic collaborations, understand the PMBoK or IPMA competencies to represent this relevance, and focus on “refining the business model” of their programs. Papers of socio-technical and critical approaches, understand relevance to practice more in terms of the scholarly calls for more focus on soft skills, action-in-practice and situation-based approaches, and experiment with educational formats such as fusing PM with other disciplines or approaching PM from a discursive or even philosophical understanding. Most recently we see a small tendency to start looking outside the traditional disciplines of PM, either through content or methods from other, more distant, disciplines, such as design thinking or through teaching PM university wide. In the teaching methods group, the largely dominant motivation for exploring new teaching methods is to incorporate application, or a sense of “reality” into the courses. For the large part, most agree that the complexity of (quasi-) reality will (automatically) further students’ understanding of the context and interrelatedness of theoretical concepts, as well as provide immediate “feedback” on students’ choices (cause-effect relationships) allowing them to “fail fast” in a safe environment. The adoption of new teaching methods is often driven by the need

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to spark an interest or motivate the learner to engage with the course material. In case-based methods, this is achieved through the relevance of reality in the understanding of “transferable skills” development and client-contact, in simulations and games through elements of entertainment and play, and in ICT-focused papers on the flexibility and availability of learning modes as well as the relevance of technological and virtually collaborative transferable skills. 3. 2 Re f le c t i v e p r a c t i c e We find explicit discussions on, and application of, the concept of reflective practice almost exclusively in papers of a critical approach. While in the direction group we found 10 papers, including the 3 papers by far the most cited of the 136 papers in this review (Crawford et al., 2006; Pant & Baroudi, 2008; Thomas & Mengel, 2008) engaging with it, the educational development group only includes 5 papers with a distinct discussion. In the teaching methods group the most obvious point regarding reflective practice as a concept is the actual lack of it. Although reflective practice is not explicitly engaged, we find, however, a few papers to engage critically with the challenges for the traditional PM-E model. For example, a few of the papers that apply the concept of problem-based learning also focus on training the ability to become a self-directed learner (Tynjälä, Pirhonen, Vartiainen & Helle, 2009) or exercises to enhance reflection (Cano & Lidón, 2011; Pollard, 2012). In the following we shortly sketch the three main contributions to the concept of reflective practice, and then provide a table-overview of further contributing papers within this review, and a short summary of discerned patterns. The pivotal paper of Crawford et al. (2006), explicating the 5th direction of the Rethink Network, spells out the challenges as well as the implications of a move from understanding the project manager as a trained technician to a reflective practitioner. The reflective project practitioner is defined as “able to learn, operate and adapt effectively in complex project environments”. Above that, Crawford et al. advocate a more “holistic capability development that extends beyond knowledge to encompass practical application and experience, attributes and behaviors” (2006: 727). For this purpose, they point towards experiential and critical learning models and propose some practical responses for developing experts as reflective practitioners. In the 2008 special issue, Thomas and Mengel (2008: 307) focus in on advanced PM-E and conclude a strong coherence with the PMBoK and a lack of preparation of project managers to deal with complexity – which they find

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mainly relevant for expert practitioners. As requirements for working “at the edge of chaos”, Thomas and Mengel point towards a focus on transformational leadership, social architecture, political acumen, and emotional intelligence – leading them to propose a development model from apprentice, over journeyman to master which draws on Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ (1986) skills acquisition model from novice to expert. For the master project manager, more constructivist educational approaches are proposed, and rather than engaging with the concept of “reflective practice”, they focus on critical pedagogy and an understanding of critical reflection as “questioning assumptions and taken for granted notions embedded in theory and practice, recognizing the processes of power and ideology inherent in institutional practices, procedures and institutions, exploring the hidden agendas concealed by claims of rationality and objectivity, and working towards realizing a more just work environment” (Thomas & Mengel, 2008: 310-311). Also, in 2008, Sewchurran argues for an alternative approach to PM-E that focuses on self-organization and reflective practice. The Dreyfus and Dreyfus model is reiterated here and connected to the development from unconsciously incompetent, over consciously incompetent and consciously competence, to the unconsciously competent expert. This is framed within Heidegger’s existential phenomenology of “being in the world” as a non-separation of thinking and doing, through which experts are able to transcend the toolset of PM. Sewchurran argues for presenting the PM curriculum as a discourse, and for developing reflexive habits (Schön) in undergraduate PM courses through combination of “doing” (tool application), “understanding” (reflecting) and “being” (transcendence) modes. PAPER

FOCUS

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EDUCATION

LEVEL

Direction and skillset group Crawford et al., 2006

From trained technician to reflective practitioner: adaptation in complex environments

Experiential and critical learning models

Experts/MBA

Pant & Baroudi, 2008

Human imperative: tacit knowledge, emotional intelligence and life-long learning

Soft skills development

General higher education

Thomas & Mengel, 2008

Advanced PM-E to deal with complexity: Critical questioning

Constructivist and critical pedagogy

Experts/MBA

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Bergreen & Söderlund, 2008

Advanced PM-E: social twist and knowledge co-production

Action learning through co-creation and combining research and practice

Expert/MBA

Hällgren et al., 2012a

PM-E lead to loss of relevance

Situation-sensitive teaching methods

General

Hällgren et al., 2012b

The impact of a Scandinavian project literature classic

Situation-sensitive teaching methods and self-reflection

General

Thomas et al., 2012

Expert project practitioners integrate multiple thinking styles

Experiential learning models

Expert/MBA

Ramazani & Jergeas, 2015

Improve reflective skills through critical thinking, combination of technical and interpersonal skills

More contextualized learning

General

Cicmil & Gaggiotti, 2018

Responsible forms of PM-E

Critical pedagogy and engaged scholarship

Expert/MBA

Educational development group Sewchurran, 2008

Trascending PM the toolset of PM through Heidegger’s existential phenomenology of “being in the world”

PM curriculum as a discourse, developing reflexive habits early

Undergraduate

Walker, 2008

Action-research approach based on androgical philosophy

Situated sense making, facilitated in global and online format

Experts (professional doctorate)

Córdoba & Piki, 2011

Collectively oriented understanding of student groups as systems

Collaborative learning approach for social, self-reflective and ethical aspects of project work

Undergraduate/ Master

Shelley, 2015

Hybrid-approach (hard/soft) for softskills extension of the iron triangle to strategic relevance

Soft skills learned through experience and social exchange, and reflection through writing case studies from own project experience

Expert/MBA

Turner, 2016

Rethink Networks’ impact on research and education

Increased focus on human aspects and soft skills

General

Ta b l e 3 . O v e r v i e w o f c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o r e f l e c t i v e p r a c t i c e .

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Summarizing the above contributions, we can state that in the conceptualization of reflective practice, experience takes up more of the stage light than does critical reflection. A majority of the papers addressing reflective or soft aspects focus on the level of further or advanced education. Further, extensive experience is generally understood as a prerequisite for critical reflection. Outside the direction group, the focus is mainly on adding soft skills on top of the technical skillset, rather than reflection per se, resulting then in lack of critical reflection (Cotter & Cullen, 2012; Dyer & Hurd, 2016). While the inclusion of practice-aspects in education for the development of reflective practice is coherent with the recommendations of critical research streams (Crawford et al., 2006; Hodgson & Cicmil, 2006), such broad assumptions also risks undermining the critical aspirations of the concept by falling into the trap of “false-synthesis”, wherein the idea of the reflective practitioner is co-opted and bureaucratic order and instrumentalist control are internalized rather than outwardly enforced (Sage et al., 2010). Specifically, the papers in the teaching methods group is most often largely disconnected from considerations as to correlations between teaching method, curriculum and the direction of the PM discipline, building further towards a fragmentation of a dialogue and lack of constructive alignment of the development of PM-E. In general, we can detect an underlying experience-based model of skills-acquisition, in particular in combination with experiential and collaborative learning approaches. We posit that several factors mutually enhance the focus on experience. First of all, the concept of reflective practice is integrated with the development model of the expert practitioner by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) and thereby becomes “staged” and contingent on experience. Furthermore, the authors behind the call for reflective practice in PM are focused mainly on the expert practitioner. And finally, the history of the field of PM, with strong certification systems, contribute further to the focus on experience, even in higher education (Crawford et al., 2006). 4. DIS C U S S I O N The first aim of this chapter is to explore and analyse the role of reflective practice and reflexivity in the research on PM-E based on a structured review of the identified literature. As seen in our analysis of the patterns in publications, we have identified 3 groupings. Firstly, we want to highlight and discuss the results of this

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analysis and point at challenges related to reflective practice and reflexivity in PM-E research including their implications for the discipline. Secondly, our analyses of publication patterns and research methods revealed further analytical and methodological challenges, which are strongly related to, and might even augment, the main challenges and implications for the research area. Considering more closely the consequences for (and of) the development of the idea of reflective practice in PM-E, we can clearly state that it plays a prominent role in the newer, more critical research streams. However, when considering the vast development of the concept of reflective practice in other professional and academic fields, such as for example nursing and teacher education, the conceptualizations in the field of PM are still in the early phase of development, focusing mainly on the expert practitioner’s ability “to apply technical PM tools contextualized for their specific project in a manner appropriate to the organization and project type” (Crawford et al., 2006: 731), rather than the more critical ideals of questioning assumptions, recognizing processes of power and ideology, exploring the hidden agendas concealed by claims of rationality and objectivity, and working towards realizing a more just work environment (Thomas & Mengel, 2008). A first reason for this is the confinement of reflective practices in a staged acquisition model. What we observe is that the instances where the concept of reflective practice is translated into application (case examples in the direction and educational development groups), is mostly in programs focused on developing the expert practitioner. Within the findings of this review, there are only a couple of examples of educational development within undergraduate and graduate programs that take the critical streams into consideration, and even less within the development of specific teaching methods. This results in the challenge that the conceptualization of reflective practice within PM, which has been coupled with maturity models such as Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) and embodied within the certification models (Goodall & Leimbach, 2018), leads the field to overlook the development of more critical aspects of reflective practice. Moreover, it reinforces the structure of the certification systems, which requires a specific amount of experience to advance through the system, similar to a stage-gate-model. One implication of this selected focus on expertise, is that reflective practice for novices is largely ignored, even though the majority of university students across the globe would fall into this (narrowly defined) category of project experience. As Sewchurran (2008: 329) points out, an initial instrumental grounding “can retard development of high levels of competence”.

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Another finding is the limited scope of current project management research. The research found in this analysis is conducted almost exclusively within the classical disciplines of PM, although the spread of the project format to almost all industries is widely recognized and some papers even argue for a broadening of the project format into the other areas, like the cultural life (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2016). This results in the challenge that there is a limited influence and exchange by and with non-traditional disciplines to the development of PM-E and conceptualization of reflective practices as pointed out before. Our observations also point to a pattern as to how the development of new research streams “trickle down” through the 3 identified groupings within PM-E. Newer research streams, such as those within the critical approach, are recognized to a large degree within the conceptualization of PM skillset and educational direction, but to a lesser degree in educational development, and are almost non-existent within the large proportion of writings on teaching methods, analogous to an obstructed trickle-down-effect. One reason could be a lacking conceptualization and clarity as to the operationalization of reflective practice – how is it actually done. Since motivation to rethink project management is lessened the closer, we get to the classroom, it is important to ensure a better vertical flow that is able to connect conceptualization with implementation. For the ambitions of reflective practice to unfold, an increased level of coherence as well as continuous cognizance, cautiousness and critical questioning of its conceptualization is crucial (Sage et al., 2010). Strongly related to this, our analysis also showed a lack of a coherent discussion within and between the three groups due to the dispersed publication pattern in the field. There are minor conversations going on in particular in the teaching methods group, where authors cite each other, either within an area of assumptions, or within specific teaching methods. Even in the directions group, where many of the papers appear in the major PM journals, the conversation is still limited, especially in-between assumptions. One reason pointing at the low implementation of reflective practices can be found in the observation of a lack of explication and contention with our inherent situatedness as researchers. This includes the authors’ theoretical standpoint as well as their relation to the data. Our observation of a lack of taking an explicit theoretical stance, we find is closely related to the general challenge for PM identified by Söderlund and Maylor (2012) to “simultaneously make room for both the exploration and exploitation of knowledge”. As argued by Geraldi and Söder-

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lund (2016), a 6th direction, to ensure the implementation of the Rethink intentions, is an interpretive approach to the relationship between the researcher and the researched – an engaged scholarship that is able to balance relevance and rigor, all the while recognizing that research is never neutral, and taking responsibility for what might be hidden “in the very gaze of the scientist” (Bourdieu, 2004; in Geraldi & Söderlund, 2016). Based on the discussion of the identified challenges we suggest three possible ways addressing them: Firstly, we want to suggest exploring alternative competency development models to the experience-based, which enable the fostering of reflection and reflexivity for novice learners. This is particularly important, as increasing experience is not inevitably connected to the ability to reflect on one’s own actions, and so critical reflection must be deliberate and therefore learned, as stated by Berggren and Söderlund (2008). Berggren and Söderlund contribute with concrete advice for practicing managers to build reflective capabilities. Building on an expanded version of Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle, they address the required combination of action and reflection. Furthermore, they point at different social environments, where learning can take place. This results in a 2x3 model of learning modes, for which they outline different examples of related learning activities in the article (see Figure 3). Individual

Group

Organization

Reflection

Individual reflection, writing and reading, articulation of experience. Example: Reflection report.

Experience sharing, class discussion, litterature reviews. Example: Roundtable examination.

Organizational dialogue, public presentation, articulation of lessons learned and implications. Example: Knowledge theater.

Action

Individual action, formulation of action plans, presentation of measures for improvements. Example: Learning contract.

Teamwork, joint problem-solving, case assignments, project work. Example: Live case.

Organizational action, sponsored projects, top management assignments. Example: Thesis work.

F i g u r e 3 . D i f f e r e n t m o d e s o f l e a r n i n g a c c o r d i n g t o B e r g g r e n & S ö d e r l u n d (2 0 0 8).

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Secondly, we argue to broaden the dialogue by opening for inputs beyond the classical disciplines of PM, either in the form of alternative conceptualisation of reflective practice or concrete examples of PM-E within other disciplines. This input would be relevant for advancing the area in general through new perspectives, but also to reframe or qualify PM for inclusion into other educational disciplines, in coherence with its profileration. Finally, we also see a potential for the development of reflective practice within PM-E towards more critical and emancipatory ambitions. One interesting new approach towards this is shown by Cicmil and Gaggiotti (2018). They argue for responsible forms of PM-E, that include critical debate and theorizing, as well as goals of social and environmental responsibility and emancipation of the learner. An interesting point here, is that that Cicmil and Gaggiotti do not call upon the concept of reflective practice, but rather, reflective pedagogy, and so provides a development to the discussion that might be seen to surpass the reflective ambitions of the concept within PM-E so far and thereby may offer a new venue for discussions. 5. C O N C L U S I O N It has been the intention of our analysis to provide a status of the situated development of the concept of refletive practice within the field of PM-E. Moreover, we aimed to identify and discuss current trends and challenges in order to contribute the development of the concept and its operationalization into educational practice. With regards to the use of reflective practice in PM-E we observed three main findings: Firstly, a limited use of the concept of reflective practice addressing mainly the adjustment of models to given situation, less a critical questioning of them; secondly, we realized a limited scope of the field, which is mainly centered around the classical disciplines of engineering, business and IT; and thirdly, an obstructed “trickle-down effect” between the different groupings of research, augmented by a distributed publication pattern. Additionally, we found a largely methodological challenge in the lack of reflection on the situatedness of the researcher, in a certain set of assumptions as well as in certain relations to the data. We have found the concept of reflective practice to play a central role in the understanding and development of especially newer streams in PM education, but suggest a lack of conceptual elaboration that considers both its potential to

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enable and constrain educational developments and makes the concept more available to operationalisation in the classroom. Furthermore, we posit, that when the maturity cycle becomes bound to a stage-gate understanding of learning from experience, it seems a consequence can be a lack of focus on other forms of learning, such as the lack of ambition as to the reflection of the novice learner, as well as reflections of a more critical nature. We see a potential for the development of reflective practice within project management education towards more critical and emancipatory ambitions, alternative educational development models to the experience-based, as well as learning from interpretations of the concept within non-traditional disciplines. REFERENCES Argyris, C. & Schön, D.A. (1974). Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness: JosseyBass. Berggren, C. & Söderlund, J. (2008). Rethinking project management education: Social twists and knowledge co-production. International Journal of Project Management, 26(3), 286-296. Blomquist, T., Hällgren, M., Nilsson, A., & Söderholm, A. (2010). Project-as-practice: In search of project management research that matters. Project Management Journal, 41(1), 5-16. Bourdieu, P. (2004). Science of Science and Reflexivity. Cambridge: Polity. Cano, J.L. & Lidón, I. (2011). Guided reflection on project definition. International Journal of Project Management, 29(5), 525-536. Cicmil, S. (2006). Understanding project management practice through interpretative and critical research perspectives. Project Management Journal, 37(2), 27-37. Cicmil, S. & Gaggiotti, H. (2018). Responsible forms of project management education: Theoretical plurality and reflective pedagogies. International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), 208-218. Córdoba, J.R. & Piki, A. (2011). Facilitating project management education through groups as systems. International Journal of Project Management, 30(1), 83-93. Cotter, R.J. & Cullen, J.G. (2012). Reflexive management learning: An integrative review and a conceptual typology. Human Resource Development Review, 11(2), 227-253. Crawford, L., Morris, P., Thomas, J., & Winter, M. (2006). Practitioner development: From trained technicians to reflective practitioners. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8), 722-733. Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Boston: Heath. Dreyfus, H.L. & Dreyfus, S.E. (1986). Mind over Machine. The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. New York: Macmillan. Dreyfus, S.E. & Dreyfus, H.L. (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. Berkeley: Operations Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. Dyer, S.L. & Hurd, F. (2016). “What’s going on?” Developing reflexivity in the management classroom: From surface to deep learning and everything in between. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(2), 287-303.

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Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on ‘reflective practice’. Practice-Based Professional Learning Paper 52, The Open University, 1-27. Geraldi, J. & Söderlund, J. (2016). Project studies and engaged scholarship: Directions towards contextualized and reflexive research on projects. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 9(4), 767-797. Goodall, J.B. & Leimbach, T. (2018). Teaching and learning in a traveling discipline. In P. Svejvig & M.R.P. Hansen (eds.), The Human in the Project (pp. 49-61). Roskilde: Roskilde University. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and Human Interests; Theory and Practice; Communication and the Evolution of Society (J.J. Shapiro, Trans.). London: Heinemann. Hällgren, M., Jacobsson, M., & Söderholm, A. (2012). Embracing the drifting environment: The legacy and impact of a Scandinavian project literature classic. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 5(4), 695-713. Hällgren, M., Nilsson, A., Blomquist, T., & Söderholm, A. (2012). Relevance lost! A critical review of project management standardisation. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 5(3), 457-485. Hart, C. (2018). Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Research Imagination. 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Hodgson, D.E. & Cicmil, S. (2006). Making Projects Critical. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Jónasson, H.I. & Ingason, H.T. (2019). Project Leadership. Abingdon, Oxon/New York: Routledge. Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Lalonde, P.-L., Bourgault, M., & Findeli, A. (2012). An empirical investigation of the project situation: PM practice as an inquiry process. International Journal of Project Management, 30(4), 418-431. Leimbach, T. & Goodall, J.B. (2017). The relation between project management education and newer streams in project management research. In M.R.P. Hansen & J. Pries-Heje (eds.), The Future of Project Management (pp. 65-74). Roskilde: Roskilde University. Morris, P., Crawford, L., Hodgson, D., Shepherd, M.M., & Thomas, J. (2006). Exploring the role of formal bodies of knowledge in defining a profession – The case of project management. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8), 710-721. Morris, P., Pinto, J.K., & Söderlund, J. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Project Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Onwuegbuzie, A.J. & Frels, R. (2016). 7 Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal & Cultural Approach. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Pant, I. & Baroudi, B. (2008). Project management education: The human skills imperative. International Journal of Project Management, 26(2), 124-128. Pollard, C.E. (2012). Lessons learned from client projects in an undergraduate project management course. Journal of Information Systems Education, 23(3), 271-282. Ramazani, J. & Jergeas, G. (2015). Project managers and the journey from good to great: The benefits of investment in project management training and education. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 41-52. Rumeser, D. & Emsley, M. (2018). A systematic review of project management serious games: Identifying gaps, trends, and directions for future research. The Journal of Modern Project Management, 6(1), 48-59. Sage, D., Dainty, A., & Brookes, N. (2010). A consideration of reflexive practice within the critical projects movement. International Journal of Project Management, 28(6), 539-546.

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Sahlin-Andersson, K. & Söderholm, A. (eds.) (2002). Beyond Project Management: New Perspectives on the Temporary – Permanent Dilemma. Malmö: Liber. Schön, D.A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D.A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. The Jossey-Bass Higher Education Series. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Schoper, Y.-G., Wald, A., Ingason, H.T., & Fridgeirsson, T.V. (2018). Projectification in Western economies: A comparative study of Germany, Norway and Iceland. International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), 71-82. Sewchurran, K. (2008). Toward an approach to create self-organizing and reflexive information systems project practitioners. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 1(3), 316333. Shelley, A.W. (2015). Project management and leadership education facilitated as projects. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 8(3), 478-490. Söderlund, J. & Maylor, H. (2012). Project management scholarship: Relevance, impact and five integrative challenges for business and management schools. International Journal of Project Management, 30(6), 686-696. Svejvig, P. & Andersen, P. (2015). Rethinking project management: A structured literature review with a critical look at the brave new world. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 278-290. Thomas, J., George, S., & Buckle Henning, P. (2012). Re-situating expert project managers’ praxis within multiple logics of practice. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 5(3), 377-399. Thomas, J. & Mengel, T. (2008). Preparing project managers to deal with complexity – Advanced project management education. International Journal of Project Management, 26(3), 304-315. Tricco, A.C., Lillie, E., Zarin, W., O‘Brien, K.K., & Colquhoun, H. et. al. (2018). PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR): checklist and explanation. Annals of Internal Medicine, 169(7), 467-473. Turner, M. (2016). Beyond the iron triangle: Reflections of an early career academic. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 9(4), 892-902. Tynjälä, P., Pirhonen, M., Vartiainen, T., & Helle, L. (2009). Educating IT project managers through project-based learning: A working-life perspective. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 24(1), 270-288. Walker, D.H.T. (2008). Reflections on developing a project management doctorate. International Journal of Project Management, 26(3), 316-325. Winter, M., Smith, C., Morris, P., & Cicmil, S. (2006). Directions for future research in project management: The main findings of a UK government-funded research network. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8), 638-649.

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PRO JEC T P OR T F OL IO IMPROVA BIL I T Y: ME A SU RING E X PEC T E D VA L U E AG A INS T PRE DIC T E D SUC C E S S IN ORDE R T O DEC IDE A ND IMPROV E T HE PRO JEC T P OR T F OL IO Jan Pries-Heje, Jørn Johansen and Peter Møller Jakobsen PROJEC T POR T FOLIO IMPROVABILI T Y

A B S T R AC T Project Portfolio Management (PPM) focuses on the integration and alignment of projects with the business operation in order to achieve most value and cost-efficiency for the investment in projects. PPM is often a challenge and especially so for improvement projects where PPM is considerably underdeveloped. In this paper, we present a model for Project Portfolio Improvement combining predicted success and expected value. The core of the model is about measuring expected value up against a measure of the predicted project success rate. Value can for example be measured as earnings/profit, maturity, and/or efficiency. Success can be measured using the ImprovAbility model that is part of ISO 33014. We then present a case from Vestas, one of the leading windmill producers in the world. Vestas have used the model for project portfolio management in three rounds in 2016-19 to improve their abilities and increase the rate of success dramatically. Finally, we conclude that our generic model may be very useful for process improvement and innovation PPM in other companies. Keywords: Portfolio management; Value; Success; Improvement; Maturity; Process improvement 1. I N T RO DU C T I O N Project Portfolio Management (PPM) focuses on how project ideas and ongoing projects can be aligned with the business plan and operation: “It brings projects into harmony with the strategies, resources, and executive oversight of the enterprise and provides the structure and processes for project portfolio governance” 113

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(Levine, 2005). We find the first mentioning of PPM more than 50 years ago as a focus on how to choose which projects to start? (Baker & Pound, 1964). Later researchers such as Archer and Ghasemzadeh (1999) expand the scope to include the processes before choosing which ideas to realize and after having chosen which projects to initiate. For example, they emphasize that ongoing projects that achieved important milestones need to be (re-) evaluated together with the new ideas for projects in order to ensure that money are not used on executing existing projects that could have been used better starting new projects. Today PPM is an important dynamic capability that has demonstrated its value in empirical studies (Daniel, Ward & Franken, 2014). PPM also has demonstrated its value in relation to innovation (Hunt, Killen, Hunt & Kleinschmidt, 2008). The ‘portfolio’ in PPM is the set of projects either being considered or going on. All the major organizations defining project management have defined what is meant by and included in PPM; see for example (PMI, 2013). A book on PPM coins it “… the biggest leap in project management technology since the … late 1950s” (Levine, 2005). However, PPM is a challenge for many organizations even if you subscribe to the best practice and theory on PPM. For example, an empirical study found that “Although companies manage project portfolios concordantly with project portfolio theory, they may experience problems in the form of delayed projects, resource struggles, stress, and a lack of overview” (Blichfeldt & Eskerod, 2008). Another more recent study found that companies struggle with the sub-optimization and changes among their projects, even if various normative instructions and good practices have been introduced for PPM (Martinsuo, 2013). It is key to any PPM effort that one should align the strategy of the company with the business. What is relatively new is that you need “structural alignment”, that is aligning your organisational structure as well (Kaiser, El Arbi & Ahlemann, 2015). Another challenge for PPM is the behaviour of internal stakeholders (Beringer, Jonas & Kock, 2013). Not so much the portfolio manager – that was found to be insignificant – but more the behaviour of management especially top- and se­ nior-management. In any organization, there may be projects of many kinds. Product development projects aimed at a market and having an attractive business model will typically receive more attention than more internally-oriented Improvement projects aimed at improving internal processes in an organization. Hence, with an

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outset in the existing literature there is a research question begging to be answered, namely: How can we improve PPM for improvement projects? The way companies often organise and manage improvement efforts is by using a process improvement model. A few years back a new standard for process improvement called the ISO 33014 standard (ISO, 2013) for use in IT organizations was published. The standard operates at three levels called strategic, tactical and operational. At the strategic level an organization is to start with identifying business goals, identifying the scope of organizational change, selecting models and methods and identifying roles, and then identify the overall change strategy. Then comes the tactical level where the more specific planning of the organizational change and process improvement projects take place. One way of applying the standard is by using one of the maturity models such as ISO/IEC 33014 (ISO, 2013) or the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI, 2006), and use the newly developed ImprovAbility model (Pries-Heje & Johansen, 2013) (that specifically implements the ISO 33014 standard) to strengthen the success rate for the improvement initiatives identified in the maturity assessment. The ImprovAbility model includes a list of 20 critical monitoring parameters and an analysis method to assess an organisation. However, even if the use of widespread maturity models and ISO standards identify improvement projects they do not specifically address the project portfolio management for improvement projects. Hence, we follow our research question with: Whether one can use these improvement models to improve PPM for improvement projects? To answer the two research questions we have undertaken a case study at Vestas, a global energy company dedicated exclusively to wind energy (this book chapter improves on an earlier paper (Pries-Heje, Jakobsen, Korsaa & Johansen, 2017)). In the remainder of the paper we will, in section 2, first give a more specific account with details of the ISO 33014 standard (ISO, 2013), the ImprovAbility model (Pries-Heje & Johansen, 2013), and the CMMI (CMMI, 2006). Next, in section 3, we develop a generic model to of PPM as a theory and literature-based answer to our research questions. In section 4 we present the Vestas case, then in section 5 to 7 we present three rounds of applying the generic model. Then in section 8 follows a discussion. And, finally, a Conclusion answering both the overall and the more detailed research question follows.

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2. M E A SU R I N G P RO C E S S I M P ROV E M E N T Measuring success or just improvement, or are we measuring process maturity? The preceding questions are always a challenge. Several models have been proposed as solutions. The ImprovAbility model was developed in a very large Danish research project with two of the authors of this paper as project manager and responsible for research. The ImprovAbility model soon became part of ISO/IEC 33014 (ISO, 2013) standard for process improvement. The ISO describes how process improvement operates at three levels; strategic, tactical and operational. The ISO/IEC 33014 clearly addresses the need for a connection between strategic, tactical and operational level. It is often seen that top management introduce a new strategic goal (as a dream for the future) with no activities at the two other levels, as well as many improvement activities at operational level does not support any strategic goals. It is important that the entire organisation develops in the same direction. Many organizations start with a process assessment (Step 3, Tactical level, Improve Processes) and get insight into the maturity level of the organization, capability levels for the processes, and several recommendations and ideas for improvement projects. Other organizations get ideas for improvement projects from lessons learned or quality reviews. Some of these recommendations and ideas lead to improvements programs and projects. Another input for improvement programs comes from strategic goals defined by to management. Strategic goal examples could be product line management or outsourcing, which require changes and improvements of the organization and its functions and processes. All these improvement programs and projects end at the tactical level where the more specific planning of the improvements takes place. Typically, a higher maturity level is not the final goal for improvement projects. A higher maturity normally supports strategic goals. The maturity level is a powerful indicator of process performance, and more importantly, it is a measure that senior management can relate to and use for target settings. In this case, the maturity measure is based on CMMI (CMMI, 2006) that elicits the status of the development process on one page. In the case of Vestas, the assessments were carried out by the Danish company Whitebox to which an of the authors of this paper belong. A maturity assessment delivers a clear and simple measure, which can be used by Senior management to identify improvement projects, focus the improvement effort and clearly communicate goals for improvement. However, it is often seen

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that the results of a maturity assessment are neglected and not used for anything. Our best guess is results usage of around 50%. Success with improvement projects needs a Senior management, which can see the benefit of more professionalism in development to support strategic goals. The first step may be to establish a list of improvement programs, projects and initiatives. The list enables knowledge of which strategic goals are defined and makes it possible for management to prioritize the most appealing initiatives. The next step is to define the most appealing improvements as projects with plans, business cases, risk analysis, stakeholder analysis and overall requirements. The third step is to evaluate all the projects; how “healthy” are they? The ImprovAbility model can be used for this evaluation. The ImprovAbility model includes 17 success enhancement parameters, which characterizes the “healthiness” of an improvement project (20 enhancement parameters are used to determine an organization’s ability to improve). By interviewing the project manager and eventually other key persons, the assessors score the parameters and the project. The parameters are shown in Figure 1 below in the four categories: Initiation, Projects, In Use and Foundation. The parameters are described in ISO/IEC 33014 (ISO, 2013).

Initiation · Sensing urgency · Idea processing

Foundation · Expectation management · Knowledge management · Management competence

Projects · Project goal and requirements · Project team · Project competence and knowledge

· · · ·

In Use · · · · ·

Project quality Deployment strategy Deployment means Roles and responsibility Operations and maintenance

Project process Project prioritising Management support Involvement of others

F i g u r e 1. T h e I m p r o vA b i l i t y e n h a n c e m e n t p a r a m e t e r s f o r s u c c e s s w i t h i m p r o v e m e n t p r o j e c t s .

During the interview with representatives from the improvement project, each enhancement parameter is scored through a set of questions. From all parameters a model per improvement project on a scale from 1 to 4 (1 is lowest and 4 is

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highest) will emerge. When you conduct an ImprovAbility assessment, you aim at providing an overall ‘helicopter’ view of the improvement project. Given that most of the parameters are very non-technical, you will be forced to focus on the stakeholders and the context of the project—the culture, the management, the team-work, the interfaces to other stakeholders—and put the product itself in the background for a little while. The entire project team benefits from the assessment process, as everyone can discuss issues and matters that many usually don’t have time for. After the assessment, communication and negotiation between the project team and Senior Management become easier. Each improvement project will get a score by taking the average of the enhancement parameters. This measurement is easy to present and is an important overview of all ongoing improvement projects across the organization. This paper demonstrates how it is possible to use one model to show the “health” of a set of improvement projects and how the organizations ability to improve over time. Such an insight is valuable for an organization for navigating in the landscape of improvement projects, especially for senior management. Which projects need more support, which projects need to be reconsidered in relation to scope, which projects must be reconsidered in general, and which projects seem to be successful and have the right scope? The last step is to evaluate the effect of each initiative on the organization’s maturity/process performance. This is done by the maturity assessors who, based on the models, evaluate how the improvement projects will affect the set of specific and generic process practices on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 equal nothing; 10 equals complete). So, the problem we demonstrate from this research chapter demonstrates and validates a set of improvement projects in an organization to be able to sort and show their “health” combined with the impact on a higher maturity level – as a one pager – and how it develops over time. Seen from a Danish perspective, improvement of development or project delivery functions in companies has increased attention during the last 4 years. More maturity assessments are performed and management attention on capabilities increasingly receive more and more focus. The ImprovAbility validation of improvement initiatives in combination with the effect of the initiative in a relation to achievement of a strategic goal will give top management a new operational

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overview for prioritisation of improvement effort. If management also require a business case for every initiative, as well as a follow up on business cases, management capability will be strengthened and also provide the PPM organization with a set of new tools. 3. O U R M O DE L F O R P RO J EC T P O R T F O L I O I M P ROVA BI L I T Y As stated above an important part of PPM is choosing the ideas for projects that should be initiated. Typically, any organization has more ideas than they have resources to cover at any time. Thus, it is important to choose some criteria that can be applied to the ideas for deciding which ones to initiate as projects. As an overall title we could call this dimension expected value. Another issue of importance is that at any time an organization may have many ongoing projects. Projects that have been decided months or even years before. These projects are currently in progress and are doing more or less well. Thus, if we could find a way to measure the predicted success of these projects we could decide which projects to stop or de-escalate as well as which projects to focus on to increase the chance of success. In Figure 2 on the next page we have shown a generic model with the two dimensions, predicted success as the Y-axis, and expected value as the X-axis. If we now assign high and low to the axes, we get four quadrants. In the upper left quadrant, we have high predicted success but low expected value. Projects in this quadrant need to be reoriented to deliver more value because they are predicted to successfully deliver the value. In the lower left quadrant we have a combination of low chance of success and low expected value. Projects in this quadrant can be stopped immediately; they are not expected to deliver high value and their chance for success is small. In the upper right corner we have the ongoing projects that are expected to deliver something of high value and with a predicted high chance of succeeding. Projects in this quadrant are the ‘gold nuggets’ that can be expected do deliver high value with a high likelihood of success.

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Predicted Success

Projects in this quadrant need to be reoriented to deliver more value. Especially because they are predicted to deliver successfully.

Projects in this quadrant are the “gold nuggets” that can be expected to deliver high value with a high likelihood of success.

Projects in this quadrant can be stopped immediately; they are not expected to deliver high value and their chance of success is little.

Projects in this quadrant are challenged; they will probably not come out successful even though they may deliver high value if they do.

Expected Value F i g u r e 2. A G e n e r i c M o d e l t h a t c a n b e u s e d f o r P r o j e c t P o r t f o l i o M a n a g e m e n t .

Finally, in the lower right corner we find the projects with high value if they deliver. Their chance of delivering successfully is very small. Projects in this quadrant are challenged; they will probably not come out successful even though they may deliver high value if they do. We derive at our generic model for PPM as shown in Figure 2. This model can provide an answer to our overall research question: How can we improve PPM for improvement projects? 4. RE S E A RC H M E T H O D A N D T H E V E S TA S C A S E We decided that the way to answer our research question was to undertake a case study (Yin, 2017) in which we apply the generic model we developed above. In the concrete we decided to use Vestas as our case. Vestas is a very large Danish company, the largest wind turbine company in the world, which operate globally and together with a lot of suppliers. The company develops very large and complex products, including delivery at the operation place (a project itself) and ongoing support for many years afterwards.

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We came into the case in 2016 at a point where Vestas had established an improvement program to focus on the recommendations from the assessment. The starting point was an assessment of improvement projects performed by assessors from Whitebox; the company where one of the authors of this paper come from. 4.1 I d e n t i f i c a t io n o f t h e im p r o v e m e n t p r oje c t s After the Whitebox assessment, which came up with several recommendations for improvement projects, the organization decided to ask the many development departments to create a list of their ongoing improvement projects. The PMO department handled the process of this improvement project investigation. It came as a surprise that more than 140 improvement projects were active – and a deeper investigation would have revealed even more. All these improvement projects were local and driven by the departments by enthusiastic employees who had the specific need for the improvement. Given the very different nature of all the improvement initiatives, it was decided to focus on those that were expected to have the greatest impact on the company maturity. The Danish company Whitebox helped with evaluation of the 140 improvement projects and identified the 40 most relevant improvement projects to be evaluated. These 40 projects were then supported and managed by the PMO departments as focused CMMI improvement projects. The first eye-opener revolved around the fact that an unstructured positive improvement took place in the organisation – yet hidden in the many different projects and in many different directions because they were based on local requirements and developed to support local improvements. 4. 2 Ev alua t i o n o f t h e imp r o v e m e n t p r oje c t s The PMO department and Whitebox scheduled an ImprovAbility- and interview-based evaluation with each of the 40 projects over a two-week period. One or two persons from each improvement project took part in an interview performed by two assessors from Whitebox. Before the interviews took place, each improvement project was asked to provide information on their improvement project, such as: Project name: Business goal, Deliverables, Resources, Stakeholders, Budget, Schedule, Hours used, Activities planned, Activities finished, Deployment activities, Risks and mitigations. The Whitebox assessors divided the work so that one assessor performed the

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interview and scored the parameters during the interview, and the other assessor took detailed notes. After the interview the two assessors aligned their opinions and eventually adjusted the score. 37 interviews were made out of 40 improvement projects. 4. 3 A nal y s i s To establish an overview for the PMO two separate steps were required for each improvement initiative. The first step was to score the ImprovAbility enhancement parameters using the NPLF – scale from ISO/IEC 330xx (ISO/IEC_33001, 2015). This was done during and just after each interview. An average score for each category in the ImprovAbility model was calculated as well as the overall score for the project. Each category was scored on a scale from 1 to 5 and represented the improvement projects “chance of success”. Next step was to evaluate the expected impact the improvement project would have on the organizational maturity (CMMI). This was done on a scale from 1 to 10, based on the assessors’ evaluation of the information gathered during the interview. This was done in the evening after a day with several interviews. After all the interviews were performed a large set of data was available for the analysis. The data for each improvement project was made up by a score for each enhancement parameter, which was aggregated to a score for each category (Initiation, Project, In Use and Foundation – marked as bold letters). The results were that the identified Deployment Strategy and Deployment Means were the weakest parameters. Supporting these would have the greatest impact on the chance of success for each of the improvement projects and for Vestas all together. 5. F I RS T P P M E VA L UAT I O N AT V E S TA S In the “Bless and follow up” quadrant was the initiatives that did not need a lot of attention (see Figure 3) but expected to have a high impact. Suggested PMO activities: Reporting and steering group. In Figure 3’s “Strong support needed” quadrant were improvement projects that needed support from the PMO department if they needed to deliver the expected high impact. Suggested PMO department activities: Training, support, resources, prioritization, conflict solving, mentoring, etc.

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In the top left “Consider a more ambitious scope” quadrant were the improvement projects in a good shape but with less impact. Maybe good enough, but maybe the PMO department could use the inertia and boost the scope. In the “Reconsider” quadrant were those that potentially could not worth the effort In this case, they were all ok, though. Figure 3 was the input to PMO department as the first overview.

Figure 3. Fir st evaluation – Chance of succes s ver sus impac t.

6 . S EC O N D P P M E VA L UAT I O N AT V E S TA S Eight months later, a new group of improvement projects was initiated and ready to be included in the PMO departments overview of ongoing improvement initiatives. A total of eight improvement projects were re-scoped or re-started from projects from the first evaluation and were now part of six of the projects in the second analysis due to more focus and support, also included in both analyses. In total we ended with interviews of 26 improvement projects in total. The same analysis approach was applied, and the effect of the increased focus was visible. The selected projects had a higher impact and a greater chance of success, illustrated by the change from Figure 3 to Figure 4 showing how the “average star” had moved to a higher degree of change for success and higher degree of impact on the maturity.

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A set of data (as illustrated in the Appendix) was also generated for the second analysis. Comparing the two sets of data it becomes clear that all enhance parameters had improved – with the largest positive difference for the parameters: Sensing urgency, Idea processing, Involving others and Management Competences. In fact, this was a very important conclusion, because, based on the ImprovAbility enhancement parameters document, the organization has improved its ability to improve, including the reason for the improvement. Sensing urgency: The rationale for the initiative was now much clearer and more communicative. It was also easier to define the business case and define the substance in the change and the solution, mainly because discussions with and involvement of stakeholder became more relevant. Idea processing: Now the organization, to a larger degree, was collecting good ideas from the organisation, performing a transparent processing of the ideas based on a set of parameters like e.g. a business case, relation to strategic goals etc. The prioritization was a defined process. Involving others: Involvement of stakeholders across the organisation has increased for the benefit of both better solutions and a more efficient engagement (support) of the initiatives. Management competences: A much stronger management commitment and involvement in the initiatives, which at different levels of the organisation result in a stronger focus on improvement.

F i g u r e 4. S e c o n d e v a l u a t i o n – C h a n c e o f s u c c e s s v e r s u s i m p a c t .

Figure 4 was also given to PMO department as the second overview.

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The second analysis revealed that both the impact and the chance of success increased over the 8 months. This was of course due to more factors, but the end result was that the overall organizational maturity increased faster. The increased impact was likely and partly due to: 1. Improvement projects initiated by management as opposed to initiated by engineers 2. Better prioritizing of improvement projects for the evaluation. The increased chance of success was likely and partly due to: 1. Increased focus on the importance of treating the projects the same way as product development projects 2. Allocating hours and budgets and hour registration 3. Looking for successes 4. Organizational changes 5. Promotion of leaders with a strong improvement agenda. 7. T H I R D P P M E VA L UAT I O N AT V E S TA S We furthermore received the possibility of following up on 10 of the improvement initiatives again 7 months later. Some projects ended, while other were stopped, though the 10 improvement projects were still ongoing.

Figure 5. T hird evaluation – Chance of succes s ver sus impac t.

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The same method was applied to the interviews, ImprovAbility scores and impact evaluation were performed again, and it was later given to the PMO as important follow-up information. The interesting observations were as follows: 1. The overall view showed PMO that the initiatives were well running – some initiatives had improved their success rate while a few decreased their success rate. 2. The average CMMI Impact versus Change of Success was the same. 3. One initiative (#52) had decreased the success rate significant, which initiated special attention and discussion of this initiative. 4. Another initiative (#73) was stock or “frozen” in the same place (was not enhanced in any way or re-prioritized). The overall conclusion was that the organization now was comfortable with its competences to improve. Structure and control were perceived as being present at the improvement initiatives in the same manner as normal development projects. We also found that some initiatives were indirectly important in that the initiative formed a necessary basis for another initiative. An example is the initiative #73. This initiative was the basis for another important and strategic goal. The initiative gave “birth” to the idea of using different x-axes relating to different strategic goals. This idea took priority in the evaluation of the initiatives for 2019. All initiatives were evaluated in relation to five different strategic goals. Thereafter some portfolio thinking was applied in that the choice of a group of initiatives was based on how to support the strategic goals best as well as having the most attractive business cases in the portfolio chosen. Finally, it was more and more important to be able to demonstrate the benefit of the initiatives. Therefore, the business cases were strengthened for the following year – so the proposal for an improvement initiative also defined a measure for the benefit, as well as initiation of a more stringent focus on measurement of the benefit. Because of the conclusions: 1. The organization has now improved significantly on its ability to improve 2. We need to relate to other strategic goals then a higher maturity 3. Stronger focus on demonstration of the improvement benefits.

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Management made the decision to scale down the use of the ImprovAbiltity method. Later on, some important improvement initiatives could be selected for an ImprovAbility evaluation as a follow-up activity. An alternative is to select a set of nearly finished initiatives and use the ImprovAbility method as a mechanism for a more structured lesson learned. 8 . DIS C U S S I O N The accuracy of both the “chance of success” and the “impact” were obvious depending on the level of analysis performed. In this specific case a light version of both the ImprovAbility analysis and the CMMI impact analysis were performed and seemed sufficiently accurate, since the use of the results was internal, the results were not used as the final answer. The responsible managers had in all cases applied their final judgement to all decisions. What is now unknown is what benefit a deeper analysis would have brought? The analysis was performed by assessors who have performed hundreds of maturity assessments and were responsible for the project that developed the ImprovAbility model. What is unknown is what level of experience is required to perform the analysis. A deeper analysis of the “chance of success” could almost auto-generate a specific risk profile for each improvement project from the ImprovAbility model. When would this be valuable? We have no doubt that this approach would speed up an organization’s ability to improve and innovate, leading us to the question of whether improvement and innovation can really be measured? In the Vestas case the breakthrough was the effect of improvement efforts. This provided Vestas leadership with insight to speed up the improvement process even more. Finally, an important thing to notice is the importance of the analysis and the assessments performed by the company Whitebox. Without that noting of what has been reported in this paper would have happened. The effort that went into the PPM undertaking for Vestas included approximately 2.5 consultancy months and 1 Vestas month covering approx. 60 improvement projects. 9. C O N C L U S I O N In this paper, we set out to answer the overall research question, how can we improve PPM for improvement projects?

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The overall answer to that is that you can combine the use of a CMMI model (CMMI, 2006) or some other assessment of value with an ImprovAbility model (Pries-Heje & Johansen, 2013). Combining these two dimensions can establish an overview of the organizations improvement projects. This overview can then be used to prioritize, lead and manage the portfolio of improvement projects in a way that optimize the improvement effect on business goals. In the concrete case of Vestas, we also demonstrated the answer to the second research question we phrased, whether one can use these improvement models to improve PPM for improvement projects? The answer given in section 4-8 of this chapter documents how Vestas established a strong focus on process improvement, managed by the PMO department, based on CMMI maturity assessments to establish the baseline and using the ImprovAbilty model to evaluate, prioritize and focus improvement projects. For the Vice President at the Vestas PMO department it is obvious that the benefit from using the combined ImprovAbility and CMMI approach at Vestas was the ability to prioritize between the improvement projects to be able to optimize the budget for improvement projects to get the best impact on the maturity improvement. It was also beneficial as communication mean – the visualization of the improvements of the ability to improve. REFERENCES Archer, N.P. & Ghasemzadeh, F. (1999). An integrated framework for project portfolio selection. International Journal of Project Management, 17(4), 207-216. Baker, N.R. & Pound, W.H. (1964). R and D project selection: Where we stand. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, (4), 124-134. Beringer, C., Jonas, D., & Kock, A. (2013). Behavior of internal stakeholders in project portfolio management and its impact on success. International Journal of Project Management, 31(6), 830-846. Blichfeldt, B.S. & Eskerod, P. (2008). Project portfolio management – There’s more to it than what management enacts. International Journal of Project Management, 26(4), 357-365. CMMI (2006). CMMI® for Development, Version 1.2. Improving Processes for Developing Better Products and Services. Pittsburgh: Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Daniel, E.M., Ward, J.M., & Franken, A. (2014). A dynamic capabilities perspective of IS project portfolio management. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(2), 95-111. Hunt, R., Killen, C.P., Hunt, R.A., & Kleinschmidt, E.J. (2008). Project portfolio management for product innovation. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 25(1), 24-38. ISO (2013). ISO/IEC/TR 33014. Information Technology–Process Assessment–Guide for Process Improvement. Geneva: ISO/IEC.

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ISO/IEC_33001 (2015). Information Technology–Process Assessment–Concepts and Terminology. International standard. Geneva: ISO/IEC. Kaiser, M.G., El Arbi, F., & Ahlemann, F. (2015). Successful project portfolio management beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural alignment. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 126-139. Levine, H.A. (2005). Project Portfolio Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Martinsuo, M. (2013). Project portfolio management in practice and in context. International Journal of Project Management, 31(6), 794-803. PMI (2013). The Standard for Portfolio Management. 3rd edition. Newton Square: Project Management Institute. Pries-Heje, J., Jakobsen, P.M., Korsaa, M., & Johansen, J. (2017). Improving Project Portfolio Management (PPM) for Improvement Projects. Paper presented at the Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement: 24th European Conference, Euro SPI 2017, September 6-8, Ostrava, Czech Republic. Pries-Heje, J. & Johansen, J. (eds.) (2013). ImprovAbility: Success with Process Improvement. Hørsholm: DELTA. Yin, R.K. (2017). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

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