Innovation and project development : an impossible equation ? Lessons from an innovative automobile project development
Résumé
Product develoment performance has become a key issue for car manufacturers. But innovation seeks to outperform dominant design, whereas project develoment targets well-defined areas (costs, lead times, quality etc.). This article provides an analysis of the extent to which innovation is compatible with recent managerial and technical methods (project and multi-project management, co-develoment, simulation tools and digital mock-ups, etc.). The analysis is based on a recent development project conducted at Renault in which these various techniques were used in an attempt to achieve highly ambitious targets simultaneously in the aread of lead times, costs and innovation. During the course of the project, unexpected design problems revealed failures in co-ordination, monitoring procedures and expertise. We argue that recent project develoment methods can induse negative effects on collective learning processes and that these effects have managerial implications for innovative developments.
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