Sylvie Blanco

The Commodity Battle: a product-market perspective on innovation resource allocation in the Process Industries

Companies in the Process Industries often try to avoid being commodity producers and strive to develop more functional products with higher profit margins. When such products are introduced on the market, they are usually imitated before long. Prices then decline, and the products degenerate in a never-ending product contest conceptualised as the Commodity Battle. The companys position in the supply-chain has been used as a point of departure, and four related matrices have been designed as roadmaps for guiding strategic allocation of resources to innovation. The framework and the empirical findings give theoretical insight, and can already be deployed as one tool for innovation resource allocation.

Project Management: Learning by Violating Principles

The chapter explores project management in action in a large public research organisation – NLAT – which decided to change its internal organisation from team- to project-based organisation a few years ago. Because they focus on the realisation of a particular set of tasks for a specific client, project management practices are oriented towards optimising the process of providing clients with answers and solutions. Based on a systematic and comparative analysis of eight NLAT projects, the chapter reports technological success as project achievements, but at the same time the systematic violation of project management principles. Three elements have been identified as enhancing learning, cumulated knowledge and competencies: low project core staffing levels, which lead to the circulation of engineers and researchers around different projects; the building and managing of thematic projects and the encouragement of ‘bricolage’ as a project management style.