Abstract:
Successful innovation depends to a high degree on an organization’s ability
to develop an effective Research & Development (R&D) process and during
the last decades many companies have adopted Stage-Gate® or similar
methodologies. Although such methodologies are credited with significantly
improving R&D results at many companies, there is still potential for
improvement, if organizations can learn from projects. Each and every R&D
project should not only result in a successful new product but also generate
learning for the organization, because this has a high importance for the
competitive advantage of an organization.
Post-project reviews (PPRs) are recognized by both practitioners and
academics as an appropriate mechanism to stimulate project-to-project
learning in R&D project teams. However, PPRs are used by relatively few
companies, and those that do utilize them often fail to do so adequately.
Surprisingly, although PPRs are widely perceived to be a useful tool,
empirical research on how they can best be used and how they support
learning within a project team is very limited. This thesis addresses this gap
in the extant knowledge and describes five in-depth exploratory case
studies, which investigated how PPRs are conducted, how they are
perceived by R&D managers and the project-to-project learning that can
result from PPRs.
Based on a complex research design which combines qualitative and
quantitative data from documents, interviews and the observation of PPR
meetings, the results show that current PPR practices vary much across
different organizations. Furthermore, R&D managers perceive PPRs as
important for learning in R&D project teams but difficult to manage
effectively. An important result was also that tacit knowledge and
experiences play an important role when analysing project-to-project
learning. Although the operationalization of tacit knowledge is difficult, the
detailed analysis of lessons learnt and metaphors used allowed to gather
conclusions on the supporting role of PPRs for the creation and transfer of
both explicit and tacit knowledge.
