E M P I R I C A L O B S E RVAT I O N S
One of the administration problems encountered in the high uncertainty projects was the risk associated with the deliverables. To quote one leader: ‘We had our fiftieth anniversary on the doorstep, and the A studio had delivered no designs. Or they tend to do everything at the last minute. By Christmas we had to decide for ourselves; we went for Black Line. It was well received, but this was only buying time in the eyes of the public. Our design process is still a concern’. Non–delivery was, of course, only one symptom of many. The opposite problem surfaced when the project did deliver, but what it delivered was not consistent with what management has defined as the business of the firm. As a managing director said: ‘I usually don’t interfere with the projects, but once a too futuristic and expensive project came on the table. It was debated in the management team meeting. The conclusion was that there was really no idea of a user for the product idea’. Problems that lay between the two extremes came in many forms. It concerned the substance of the project, as well as the management constellation. An example of the first screamed for criteria. As one project manager complained: ‘We have had difficult debates concerning the prototypes. It appeared that there had been no initial definition about the merits by which the prototype would be judged. We made failures, because the initial stage of the project was not set properly’. The other aspect of getting it managed right required the interviewees to determine what was to be understood as a problem. As one said: ‘We have concluded we have something particularly good here, that is not easy to put your finger on. When we start trying to go by the book, everything stops working! We tried it a couple of times, always with the same outcome. What does not look structured is not all that bad in the end, much to our surprise. It does not work well with strict structuring’. The application of project management standards in innovation is not always the ideal. A good summary of the interviews could probably best be summarized as concern for the right timing for introducing project admin-
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