Corporate strategy rarely offers a clear and unified directive for the company’s functions and business units. Instead, companies often have competing sets of corporate strategies. In a study based on the product development activities of a large food company, researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Auckland demonstrate that strategic alignment challenges can […]
Read More… from How to Align Conflicting Corporate Strategies to Functions
Large, complex projects are increasingly used to achieve organizational goals. The development of an innovative new product or service, for example, or launching a major strategic initiative will take place in the context of a project team focused on the specific project goal. The study of projects has emphasized project management — the mechanics involved […]
Read More… from Why Project Leaders Are Different from Project Managers
A company in the facility engineering industry took on a large and complex project that presented both technical challenges and was subject to legal regulations that affected customer requirements. Unfortunately, the steering committee (SC) in charge of the project never really understood the key trade-offs and risks in the project. Unaware of the technical or […]
Read More… from Supervising Projects Despite Limited Time and Expertise
Through a series of experiments, two researchers from the University of Chicago (PhD candidate Yanping Tu, now at the University of Florida, and professor Ayelet Fishbach) revealed that the old saying of “actions speaking louder than words” might not always hold true. The experiments had participants receiving information on whether others preferred a product or had consumed […]
Read More… from What Influences Our Choices? What Others Prefer or What They Actually Consume
Many project managers are now working with contract or distant employees who have some autonomy in how they plan out the assignment. These projects required highly skilled workers but often are not exciting enough to be intrinsically motivating. Examples include information technology or business process outsourcing projects. New research explores the implications of this type […]
Read More… from How to Use Compensation and Team Composition to Manage Procrastination
Do you wake up every morning and cannot wait to start working? Have you been challenged and fulfilled in every step of your career journey? Throughout your many jobs, do you always get the same joy out of working? If so, you have built a ‘career with a heart.’ A career with a heart is […]
Read More… from Negotiate a Career with a Heart for You and Your Employees
Innovation through collaborative teams can succeed or fail in large part based on resources dedicated to the venture. While many factors may ultimately impact success or failure, all else being equal, if more resources are allocated to a project, the risk that it fails is less. Whether or not managers are willing to dedicate those […]
Read More… from Balancing Incentives, Risk and Tolerance of Failure for Collaborative Innovation
Scholars have identified different approaches to the management of uncertainty in the entrepreneurial process. The ‘classic’ model is ‘focused commitment’. The argument in this stream of research is that making commitments early may secure future opportunities and discourage rivals from investing, accelerate learning and enable economies of scale, and provide ‘first mover’ advantage. Put very […]
Read More… from Flexibility Vs Commitment in the Entrepreneurial Process
Sooner or later, any engineer working on new technology or infrastructure will hear a familiar question from investors: Does it scale up? There are few axioms in business as simple and historically accepted as the idea that ‘big is better.’ Large-scale industrial agriculture is better — more efficient, more effective, cheaper — than the family […]
Read More… from Why Scaling Up Is No Longer the Only Strategy
Collaboration has turned traditional leadership and project management on its head in recent years. In this Idea we examine how leaders and managers can benefit from a collaborative model for implementing complex projects in organizations. In traditional project management, each phase of the project is dealt with thoroughly before moving to the next. Collaboration, however, […]
Read More… from Leading Complex Projects through Collaboration
