Christophe Midler

Projects as Arenas for Renewal and Learning Processes

There is a growing tendency to organize various aspects of business life by projects, and to set up temporary organizations in a competition where speed and adaptability becomes a major necessity. ...

Innovation in automotive telematics services: characteristics of the field and management principles

The growing role of innovation in the strategy of car manufacturers leads them to relentlessly look for new sources of differentiation. In this way Telematics, a suite of technologies centered on communications systems within cars, is expected to bolster the car industry by offering a new stream of revenues. This articles focuses on the impact of this technology on design organization. In the first part, we demonstrate that Telematics is a radical innovation for automotive industry. Therefore traditional design models, such as heavyweight project management, are unsuitable. Next, the paper studies the organization adopted by a european car manufacturer in the light of recent research on the management of innovation.

Evolution of Project as Empirical Trend and Theoretical Focus

Organising by projects appears to be on a definite increase in the world today. A growing number of persons are involved in project activities and the interest in project thinking is increasing too. There are only indirect measurements to substantiate this claim, however. One example of such an indicator is given by Jean-Pierre Boutinet who has counted bibliographic references to projects in the national French library to find that a substantial growth starting in 1960 has taken place (Boutinet 1996, p. 14). Another way of measuring this development is via the explosion of membership of professional organisations connected to projects worldwide. Project managers all over the world and across industries are united in professional organisations. To mention two, there are PMI (Project Management Institute) with a base in the US and IPMA (International Project Management Association) with a European dominance. These professional organisations have increased their membership considerably of late and they have annual conferences or congresses which in general thousands of people attend and where practical matters and experiences are discussed in efforts to learn from colleagues by comparison.

Front-Loading Problem Solving in co-Development: Managing the Contractual Organizational and Cognitive Dimensions

“ Front-loading ” problem-solving (Thomke et Fujimoto, 2000) is one of the major strategies to reduce development costs and development lead time (Midler, 1995, p 369). In co-development situations, the implementation of such methodologies rises specific questions, due to the difficult partitions in responsabilities and skills between the car manufacturer and the supplier. The problem is particularly important when customer and supplier contributions cannot be clearly interfaced in a “ black-box sourcing ” relation. The result is a difficult and permanent debate about design modifications.

Innovation-based competition and the dynamics of design in upstream suppliers

Although the evolution of the design process in car manufacturers and their first-tier suppliers has been studied extensively, the situation is different for upstream industries, usually chemical and steel firms. This article focuses on such upstream suppliers situation based on an interactive research with a major european steel-maker group, Usinor. In its first part, it demonstrate that innovation-based competition is a significant issue for companies situated upstream from end-product manufacturers. The accelerating pace of the (re)design of end products downstream is increasing opportunities for the substitution of raw materials. The importance of this issue is obscured, however, by considerable inertia in the spread of innovations through the sector. Then the article characterises the specificities of implementing an innovative design strategy due to the activity and position of the firm in the industrial chain. The conclusions will make it clear that design models developed for car-manufacturers and first tear suppliers are in many ways unsuitable for this different context. We finally propose 5 principles to evaluate and define a innovation management system in upstream suppliers.

Managing and Working in Project Society

In this book, leading authorities on project organizing explore the growing deployment of projects and other types of temporary organizations, with a focus on the challenges created by projectifica ...

Implementing a Low‐End Disruption Strategy Through Multiproject Lineage Management: The Logan Case

This paper analyzes how multiproject management can build up and develop a low-end disruptive strategy. It is based on a deep longitudinal analysis of a case within the automotive industry, namely, the Logan case developed by the Renault group. The results bring new insights into both the multiproject management and innovation strategy fields. On the project organizing side, it characterizes the complex and in some way ambiguous relations between the firm governance and the pilot project initiating the disruptive strategy. The case also formalizes project-lineage management as a way to expand the initial move into a diversified range of products and a multi-continent deployment, while keeping the key specificities of the pilot project. On the innovation strategy side, it demonstrates how disruptive strategy and organizational ambidexterity research fields can benefit from input from the project organizing domain.

Shifting from co-development to co-innovation

Carmakers and suppliers currently experiment with new forms of relationships in order to prepare and develop coherent and valuable innovations that feature incrementally evolving new products (new services, architectural breakthroughs, etc.). We observe diversity both in the very nature of co-innovation partnerships and in the in-house organisational settings. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these configurations for the partners? The aim of our research is to analyse the impact of the organisational forms of co-innovation on the performance of innovation processes. We first define co-innovation situations in contrast to the co-development model. We then present the innovation route analytical framework in order to empirically analyse co-innovation processes and assess their performance. Once this groundwork is laid, we compare four cases: two innovations both developed by a European (EASYCAR) and an Asian car manufacturer (NIPCAR). The comparison of the scenarios shows the variety of innovation cooperation processes and their related performance profiles.

Contributions of Design Thinking to Project Management in an Innovation Context

Researchers have long recognized that standard approaches to project management are ill-suited to address changes in the environment or business needs, particularly in innovative contexts characterized by uncertainty and complexity. Instead of being concerned with the efficient implementation of a deliberate strategy, a project in such a context becomes a process for strategy formulation. Three imperatives for project management arise as a result: managing the explorative phase, managing the involvement of stakeholders in the project, and managing the project in relation to the strategizing process of the firm. We propose that design thinking, a recent evolution in the field of design, can make some important contributions to these imperatives. Design thinking has been highlighted by practitioners as well as academia as a novel methodology that is potentially valuable for improving innovative outcomes, whether they are products, services, or strategies. We examine and articulate these possible contributions through 10 propositions that could form an agenda for future experimentation and empirical research on innovation project management.

Project Management Learning: A Contingent Approach

A convergent stream of research insists on the importance of adopting a contingent approach to project management, due to project characteristics and to specificities of social contexts. This chapter will focus on how such a result can be utilised in designing a project management learning program within a firm.