Egbu, C O (1999) Mechanisms for exploiting construction innovations to gain competitive advantage. In: Hughes, W (ed.) Proceedings of 15th Annual ARCOM Conference, 15-17 September 1999, Liverpool, UK.
Abstract
The paper reports some findings of a 2-year study on innovation sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which involved four case studies from four different innovative construction organizations, over 50 ethnographic interviews, company archive documents and video capture of innovative processes and products. The study explored a variety of issues such as types and sources of construction innovations, innovation strategy, climate and culture for innovation, risks in innovation and the formation of internal and external linkages to exploit organizational innovations. This paper, however, focuses on the mechanisms which construction organizations put in place to successfully exploit and benefit from innovations. It also examines the importance of an innovation strategy for the successful management of innovations. The paper shows that the important mechanisms for exploiting construction innovations include collaboration and building capability, novelty, stretching basic model product/process, providing complexity in technologies and increasing entry barriers. Other mechanisms are, being focused on a particular market niche, the continuous movement of the cost performance frontier and the management of knowledge and intellectual capital assets. The study concludes that innovations provide competitive advantages for organizations when organizations fully exploit their dynamic capabilities by mobilizing knowledge, experience and technological skills within a supportive organizational context.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | competitive advantage; innovation strategy; intellectual capital; knowledge management |
| Index terms: | competitive advantage, interview, construction organization, movement, case study, linkage, collaboration, dynamic capability, capital assets, documents, innovation strategy, knowledge management, organizational innovation, construction innovation, cost performance, complexity |
| Subjects: | health behaviours and lifestyles, business, organization, data collection methods, professional development, economics, management, systems engineering, building construction, asset management, market analysis |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here