nep-ppm New Economics Papers
on Project, Program and Portfolio Management
Issue of 2016‒07‒30
six papers chosen by
Arvi Kuura
Tartu Ülikool

  1. From the Logan to the Kwid. \r\nAmbidexterity, reverse and fractal innovation, design-to-cost: recipes from Renault\'s Entry strategy By Yannick LUNG; Bernard JULLIEN; Christophe MIDLER
  2. Incorporating a Global Perspective: Intercultural Learning through Work-Experience Projects. By Sean O'Connell; Tony Cripps
  3. Potential and partnerships in innovations in EU-funded research projects By Daniel Nepelski; Giuseppe Piroli
  4. Public private partnerships: only for the well-off? Evidence from the rural productive partnership project in Colombia By Rafael Isidro PARRA-PEÑA; Mark LUNDY; Jana BISCHLER; Bilver Adrian ASTORQUIZA; John Jairo HURTADO
  5. Innovación, Competitivad y Rentabilidad en los Sectores de la Economía Mexicana By Kurt Unger
  6. Precaution in the Governance of Technology By Andy Stirling

  1. By: Yannick LUNG; Bernard JULLIEN; Christophe MIDLER
    Abstract: A detailed comparative analysis of two \"low cost\" car projects at Renault (Logan and Kwid) illustrates how the Entry strategy has fundamentally transformed the French carmaker. An increasingly explicit reverse innovation approach has emerged, along with systematic adoption of design-to-cost methods, which are at the heart of fractal innovation. The first part of the paper analyses the conditions under which this strategy has been progressively adopted and the second part explains its implementation throughout the management of these two projects.
    Keywords: AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY, INDIA, LOW COST, RENAULT, REVERSE INNOVATION
    JEL: D22 F23 L62 N60 O14 O32
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2016-19&r=ppm
  2. By: Sean O'Connell (Nanzan University); Tony Cripps (Nanzan University)
    Abstract: This paper elucidates the on-going efforts being made at a Japanese university to develop an intercultural-learning based curriculum through work-experience projects. The main goal of the current project is to provide students with the opportunities to be able to utilize knowledge in a practical sense, such as through work-experience projects at foreign affiliate companies in Japan. Following a brief overview of the current project design and development, this paper discusses the progress achieved thus far second year of its trial implementation. Feedback gained through questionnaires, reflection papers and follow-up interviews of the participating students and companies in the first year (2015) will be discussed in an effort to provide one reference for global-skills focused curriculum development.
    Keywords: Intercultural-learning, Curriculum development, Global-skills
    JEL: I21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:itepro:3906431&r=ppm
  3. By: Daniel Nepelski; Giuseppe Piroli
    Abstract: We analyse the relationship between the composition of innovation partnerships and the potential of their innovations developed within EU-funded research projects under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), the European Union's Research and Innovation funding programme for 2007-2013. Innovation potential is assessed using a formal framework capturing three different dimensions: innovation readiness, management and market potential. Both the analysed innovations and innovators were identified by external experts during periodic Framework Programme reviews. Thus, our population includes participants in the FP7 projects that are considered as key organisations in the project delivering innovations in FP7 projects. We show that the innovative potential of research output of homogenous partnerships, e.g. between two SMEs or two large companies, is likely to be higher, as compared to heterogeneous partnerships, e.g. an SME and a large company. The impact of universities on the potential of innovations is unclear. The total number of key organizations in delivering an innovation has a negative impact on its potential. Neither project funding nor duration affects the potential of innovation. Our results contribute to the discussion on the most appropriate design of R&D consortia of organizations in publically-funded projects.
    Keywords: R&D consortia; innovation policy; framework programme, small and medium-sized enterprises.
    JEL: L52 L53 O31 O32 O25
    Date: 2016–01–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2016_01&r=ppm
  4. By: Rafael Isidro PARRA-PEÑA; Mark LUNDY; Jana BISCHLER; Bilver Adrian ASTORQUIZA; John Jairo HURTADO
    Abstract: This paper focuses on assessing the evidence that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) work well for producers from vulnerable backgrounds and/or located in post conflict zones. Looking at data from the Rural Productive Partnership Project (PAAP), a decade long program designed to overcome market barriers in Colombia, and using a combination of statistical and econometric techniques such as principal component analysis, survival models and impact assessment methods, results reveal that partnerships with vulnerable populations perform similar to others with better off participants. Partnerships in post-conflict zones perform slightly worse than those in other areas. Additionally, there is no difference in the duration of agribusiness contracts, regardless of producers’ backgrounds and location in a post-conflict zone or not. The impact assessment exercise confirms an increase in households’ sales of the PAAP product. These findings suggest that market access PPPs such as the PAAP can be inclusive, helping to link marginalized smallholder farmers to modern agricultural value chains.
    Keywords: Rural productive partnership project, productive alliance, agribusiness, agricultural policy, vulnerable farmers
    JEL: Q12 Q13 Y Q18
    Date: 2016–07–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000118:014846&r=ppm
  5. By: Kurt Unger (Division of Economics, CIDE)
    Abstract: After a brief review of contemporary Mexican policy on science and technology we locate innovation experiences of firms in the context of innovation systems and market failures. Given the purpose of competitiveness as related to local innovation policy, the focus must be to solve the market failures inhibiting the firms' willingness to assume innovation risks and uncertainty. Most of all the failure of higher rates of profitability for non-tradeables, which are discriminating against tradeables in higher competition and more uncertain outcomes. For the most part there is also a lack of continuity in the participation of firms in the programs of subsides for innovation projects. In conclusion we argue for highly differentiated policy according to sectors and states.
    Keywords: innovation, competitiveness, profitability, continuity, sectors, states, firms.
    JEL: O32
    Date: 2015–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:emc:wpaper:dte595&r=ppm
  6. By: Andy Stirling (Professor of Science & Technology Policy, University of Sussex, UK)
    Abstract: Equally at national and the highest international levels, few issues in technology governance are more vexed than those around the precautionary principle. Often using colourful rhetoric – and frequently paying scant attention to the substantive form taken by precaution in any given setting, even ostensibly academic analyses accuse precautionary approaches of being ‘dangerous’, ‘arbitrary’, ‘capricious’ and ‘irrational’ – somehow serving indiscriminately to ‘stifle discovery’, ‘suppress innovation’ and foster an 'anti-technology’ climate. The widely advocated alternative is ‘science based’ risk assessment – under which single aggregated probabilities are assigned to supposedly definitively-characterised possibilities and asserted to offer sufficient representations of the many intractable dimensions of uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance. The high economic and political stakes combine with their expediency to entrenched institutional and technological interests, to intensify these arguments. Amidst all the noise, it is easy to miss the more balanced, reasonable realities of precaution. By reference to a large literature on all sides of these debates, this paper shows how these pressures are not only misleading, but themselves seriously unscientific – leading to potentially grave vulnerabilities. Experience over more than a century in technology governance, shows that the dominant issues are not about calculation of probabilities, but about the effects of power in innovation and regulatory systems, the need for balanced consideration of alternative options, scrutinising claimed benefits as much as alleged risks and always being vigilant for the ever-present possibility of surprise. In this light, it is not rational to assert that incertitudes of many difficult kinds must always take the convenient forms susceptible to risk assessment. To invoke the name of science as a whole, in seeking to force such practices, is gravely undermining of science itself. And these pressures also seriously misrepresent the nature of innovation processes, in which the branching evolutionary dynamic means that concerns over particular trajectories simply help to favour alternative innovation pathways. Precaution is about steering innovation, not blocking it. It is not necessarily about ‘banning’ anything, but simply taking the time and effort to gather deeper and more relevant information and consider wider options. Under conditions of incertitude to which risk assessment is – even under its own definition – quite simply inapplicable, precaution offers a means to build more robust understandings of the implications of divergent views of the world and more diverse possibilities for action. Of course, like risk assessment, precaution is sometimes implemented in mistaken or exaggerated ways. But the reason such a sensible, measured approach is the object of such intense general criticism, has more to do with the pervasive imprints of power in and around conventional regulatory processes, than it does with any intrinsic features of recaution itself. Whilst partisan lobbying is legitimate in a democracy as a way to advance narrow sectoral interests, it is unfortunate when such rhetorics seek spuriously to don the clothing of disinterested science and reason in the public interest. Taking the best of all approaches, this paper ends by outlining a general framework under which more rigorous and comprehensive precautionary forms of appraisal, can be reconciled with riskbased approaches under conditions where these remain applicable. A number of practical implications arise for innovation and regulatory policy alike, spanning many different sectors of emerging technologies. In the end, precaution is identified to be about escaping from technocratic capture under which sectoral interests use narrow risk assessment to force particular views of the world. What precaution offers to enable instead is more democratic choice under ever-present uncertainties, over the best directions to be taken by innovation in any given field.
    Keywords: risk assessment, uncertainty, precaution, technology governance, direction of innovation
    Date: 2016–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sru:ssewps:2016-14&r=ppm

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