The Fuzzy Front-End of Innovation in Temporary Virtual Project Teams

In this paper, we study the fuzzy front-end (FFE) of innovation in the context of temporary virtual project teams (VPTs). We argue that despite the importance of innovation for today’s organizations, and the prevalence of VPTs in most industries, there are no studies examining how the innovation process plays out in this context. We draw on two temporary VPTs (Saint-Germain and Los Innovadores) from two different engineering-related Industry-Academia collaboration projects. Saint-Germain was a 24hour-long VPT of five engineers dispersed in two countries. Los Innovadores was a 5-month-long VPT of engineers and designers dispersed across five countries. We collected interview, observation, documentary, and other data from both teams from start to end of the VPT lifecycle, which we analysed thematically. Our analysis is still underway and so far: (a) unpacks the different stages relative to FFE activities; and (b) begins to explain how the unique characteristics of VPTs (e.g. dispersion) influence the FFE activities in the VPTs under study. In the paper, we present preliminary findings and outline the expected contributions of our study.