Exploring the social, cognitive, and political limits of innovation in projects

Introduction It is often argued that projects are the organisational form most ideally suited for innovation (e. Typically bringing together groups of people representing a diverse range of skills, knowledge, experience, functions, roles, and disciplines, projects are frequently depicted as sites of intense negotiation and creativity, where alternative ideas are generated, decisions are made, and problems solved through interactions between specialists. This paper suggests that while this image of projects as sites of innovation is a plausible one, it is crucially incomplete, both in terms of its characterisation of project work and of innovation processes. Projects are not always the setting for creative interactions, often exhibiting instead a number of social, cognitive, and political limits that channel and constrain the innovative activities of those involved. Examples of such limits include the over-routinisation of practices and relations, the formation of deeply entrenched cognitive frameworks surrounding project work, and the difficulties of integrating diverse knowledge bases and interdependent activities due to the increased potential for conflicts, disputes, and misunderstandings to occur under conditions of social diversity. All these features can mean that rather than being cauldrons of creativity, there may actually be characteristics of project work that either limit the potential for novel ideas needed to set innovation in motion, or effectively dissipate the energy needed for such creativity through political conflict over competing interests (c.f. Keegan and Turner, 2002). In terms of the characterisation of innovation, it is also important to remember that creativity is only one, albeit important, aspect of innovation processes. Innovation involves more than having a good idea or coming up with a novel solution (Tidd et al., 2005). It crucially entails complex processes of elaboration, implementation, adoption, and use that may benefit from quite different organisational conditions to those offered by projects. In particular, the diverse contributions within projects that potentially enhance the creative elements of innovation processes may arguably work against the activities required to put ideas into practice because it may be more difficult under such circumstances to reach agreement over the direction to be taken and how to achieve it. As a way of exploring the interplay between the social, cognitive, and political elements of project work, the paper is informed by practice-based approaches to studying organisations (e.g. A practice-based perspective emphasises the socially constituted, context-specific, provisional, and emergent nature of organisational knowledge and practice as culturally and historically situated. It offers a relational …