The Connectivity of Innovation in the Construction Industry

The construction industry is currently experiencing accelerating developments concerning societal demands along with project complexity, internationalization and digitalization. In an attempt to grasp the consequences of these demands on productivity and innovation, this edited book addresses how innovation is likely to take place with a more long-term perspective on the construction sector.

While existing literature focuses on organizational discontinuity and fragmentation as the main reasons for the apparent lack of innovation in the industry, this book highlights the connectivity of construction actors, resources and activities as fundamental for understanding how innovation takes place.Through 15 empirically grounded chapters, the book shows how innovation is part of construction processes on various levels, including project, firm and industry, and that these innovation processes are characterized by organizational and technological connectivity over time.

Written by European business management scholars, the chapters cover empirical cases and examples from both a multi-organizational and a multi-international perspective in terms of covering the viewpoints of different industry actors and the contexts of several different European countries including: Sweden, Norway, the UK, Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. By illustrating how connectivity is part of innovation processes in the creation of single-product innovations, of various innovations within and across projects, as well as a fundamental aspect of the processes in which innovations cross nations, the book provides a new angle on how to understand construction innovation and where the industry might (or needs to) be heading next.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in construction management, project management, engineering management, innovation studies, business and management studies.

Malena Ingemansson Havenvid is Associate Professor in construction project management at KTH the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Her research places an inter-organizational perspective on innovation and technology development in various industries, nowadays foremost in construction. She has published in ConstructionManagement and Economics, Technovation, Industrial Marketing Management, Journalof Business and Industrial Marketing, and The IMP Journal.

Åse Linné is a researcher at Uppsala University, and her main research interest is related to understanding innovation and renewal in various industries. She has published in the following journals: ConstructionManagement and Economics, Industrial Marketing Management and The IMP Journal.

Lena E. Bygballe is Associate Professor at the Department of Strategy at BI Norwegian Business School and head of BI’s Centre for the Construction Industry. With an inter-organizational perspective, her research focuses on innovation, organizational development and project delivery models in the construction industry. She has published in Construction Management and Economics, International Journal of Project Management, IndustrialMarketing Management, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, and The IMP Journal.

Chris Harty is Professor of Technology and Organisation and head of the School of the Built Environment at the University of Reading. His research contributions are in the areas of understanding innovation in the built environment and organizational processes, applying socio-technical systems oriented approaches to organizations and projects, and the design, implementation and use of information systems, and he has published widely in these areas.