Handbook on Innovation and Project Management

Identifying the origins of innovation and project management, this unique Handbook explains why and how the two fields have grown and developed as separate disciplines, highlighting how and why they are now converging. It explores the theoretical and practical connections between the management of innovation and projects, examining the close relationship between the disciplines.Chapters introduce new research examining how organisations manage innovative projects to compete in global markets and tackle some of the immense economic, social and environmental challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Leading scholars in the field examine the management of innovative projects in various forms and across diverse contexts, including R&D, new product development, agile, collaboration, trust and ambidexterity. The Handbook outlines efforts to cross-fertilise ideas from innovation and project management, share and create new concepts, and borrow theories from other disciplines to assist empirical research and develop a more integrated research agenda, offering practical guidance on how to manage innovative projects in real-world settings.Comprehensive and invaluable, this Handbook is a critical read for innovation management and project management scholars and students. Practitioners in both fields interested in developing their professional skills and acquiring thought leadership in a converging field will also benefit greatly from reading this.

‘We live in a world of projects. This Handbook illuminates that world, demonstrating how to better catalyze, organize, and sustain the innovation processes embedded in project management. Reuniting separate streams of project and innovation management while incorporating the latest thinking on ecosystems and digital transformation, the Handbook will reinvigorate current experts while exciting newcomers. Highly recommended.’, ‘This Handbook provides an essential reference in the field of Innovation Project Management, grounded on a comprehensive synthesis of past works and opening stimulating perspective for further research. It shows how innovation project management contributes to key questions in management science and addresses critical issues for companies and society.’, ‘Whether using projects to manage innovation or seeking to make any project more innovative, this essential Handbook builds on a diverse, scholarly foundation to bring a wealth of practical, integrated insights for researchers and managers. Having worked in this area for 30 years, I still learned much by reading it.’, ‘Our world's grandest challenges urgently need transformative innovations that only major programmes can deliver at scale. This Handbook provides an essential reference for how we can better adapt and vary project thinking to make such advances in ways that better serve those we seek to uplift.’, ‘This Handbook provides an integrative perspective on decades of separate innovation and project management research. The introductory chapter offers novel frameworks that guide but are also informed by 22 following chapters contributed by global experts. It will be a trusted reference as well as a guide for further integrative research.’

Edited by Andrew Davies, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex Business School, UK, Sylvain Lenfle, Le CNAM Paris, the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM – Department of innovation), France, Christoph H. Loch, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK, and Christophe Midler, Centre de Recherche en Gestion-Institut Interdisciplinaire de l’Innovation, CNRS Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France