Management

SUMMARY of “STRATEGY: THE MOTIVATION FOR INNOVATION”

This paper has presented a consideration of the motivating effect of a strategic perspective on innovation within the construction industry, in the particular context of key strategic issues facing the industry, such as the need for greater client understanding and SCI. By introducing the strategy discourse and in particular, the possibilities presented by a ‘systemic’ approach (Whittington, 2000), tools have been identified which, it has been argued, will aid in; motivating participation in innovation; overcoming barriers within the social environment of the industry; meeting the challenges laid down in the Latham (1994) and Egan (1998) reports and achieving competitive advantage. Matters of creativity, pragmatic tool selection and bricolage have also been introduced.

This paper has demonstrated that elements of the strategy discourse, although not widely diffused in the construction industry, find practical application to the pressing issues facing the industry. An obvious direction for future research into strategy-led innovation would be to discover what else from the strategy discourse could hold pragmatic validity (Worren et al., 2002) for managers and exactly what the criteria for validity within the culture of the construction industry are. This takes place in the changing context of strategic priority areas such as new client demands for value.

Analysis of these priorities impact on innovation uptake within the construction industry and associated commercial consequences is important. Innovative organisations should be able to ‘... absorb, to successfully adopt or adapt what is done elsewhere’ (Blayse and Manley, 2004), hence the intangible resource of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), needed to make strategic innovations sustainable is also worthy of further study. Research into life-long learning of individuals and their organisations is important in all of these areas. These...