Innovation Project Management

5From Traditional to Innovation Project Management Thinking

• Learning Objectives for Project Managers and Innovation Personnel
• To understand that some traditional tools and processes may still apply but need to be used differently during innovation
• To understand the impact that changing assumptions and enterprise environmental factors can have on innovation decisions
• To understand the need for an information warehouse to support innovation decisions

INTRODUCTION

“Arming employees with the tools, know-how, and mindset needed to successfully innovate on a continual basis will be paramount to organizational survival.”

– Kaihan Krippendorff

For more than 50 years, we have used traditional project management practices with a great deal of success. Unfortunately, this success did not occur on all types of projects. Everyone understood that different forms of project management should be used based on the type of the project, but there existed the mentality that “one size fits all.”

The birth of modern project management was attributed to contracts with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Space Program. Whenever upgrades to the project management approach took place, emphasis was on “command and control” with the belief that success of a project was based solely on time, cost, and scope. As long as the project manager got the job done within these three constraints, the project was considered as a success.

The private sector realized quickly that a project (such as with ...