Christoph H. Loch - Böcker

Managing the Unknown offers a new way of looking at the problem of managing projects in novel and unknown environments. From Europe's leading business school, this book shows how to manage two fundamental approaches that, in combination, offer the possibility of coping with unforeseen influences that inevitably arise in novel projects:* Trial-and-Error Learning allows for redefining the plan and the project as the project unfolds* Selectionism pursues multiple, independent trials in order to pick the best one at the end Managing the Unknown offers expert guidelines to the specific project mindsets, infrastructures, and management methods required to use these project management approaches and achieve success in spite of unforeseen obstacles. This book equips readers with:* Causal explanations of why unforeseeable factors in novel projects make traditional project planning and project risk management insufficient* Directly applicable management tools that help managers to guide novel and high-uncertainty projects* Real-world case studies of both successful and unsuccessful approaches to managing high uncertainty in novel projects

Identifying the origins of innovation and project management, this unique Handbook explains why and how the two fields have grown and developed as separate disciplines, highlighting how and why they are now converging. It explores the theoretical and practical connections between the management of innovation and projects, examining the close relationship between the disciplines.Chapters introduce new research examining how organisations manage innovative projects to compete in global markets and tackle some of the immense economic, social and environmental challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Leading scholars in the field examine the management of innovative projects in various forms and across diverse contexts, including R&D, new product development, agile, collaboration, trust and ambidexterity. The Handbook outlines efforts to cross-fertilise ideas from innovation and project management, share and create new concepts, and borrow theories from other disciplines to assist empirical research and develop a more integrated research agenda, offering practical guidance on how to manage innovative projects in real-world settings.Comprehensive and invaluable, this Handbook is a critical read for innovation management and project management scholars and students. Practitioners in both fields interested in developing their professional skills and acquiring thought leadership in a converging field will also benefit greatly from reading this.

Project Selection Under Uncertainty is the result of a five-year research program on the selection of projects in New Product Development (NPD). Choosing the New Product Development portfolio is of critical importance in today's business environment. The NPD portfolio has considerable strategic effect on the "middle term" success of a business. This book takes a step in developing a theory that addresses the need for quantitative prioritization criteria within the broader strategic context of the R&D portfolios. Its foundation lies in mathematical theory of resource-constrained optimization with the goal to maximize quantitative returns. The book seeks to broaden the portfolio discussion in two ways. First, simplified models - appropriate for the data-poor NPD context - are developed, which attempt to illuminate the structure of the choice problem and robust qualitative rules of thumb, rather than detailed algorithmic decision support. Such robust rules can be applied in the R&D environment of poor data availability. Second, the annual portfolio review is not the only important choice in resource allocation. In addition, the book discusses how ideas might be pre-screened as they emerge, and how projects should be prioritized once they are funded and ongoing.

Project Selection Under Uncertainty is the result of a five-year research program on the selection of projects in New Product Development (NPD). Choosing the New Product Development portfolio is of critical importance in today's business environment. The NPD portfolio has considerable strategic effect on the "middle term" success of a business. This book takes a step in developing a theory that addresses the need for quantitative prioritization criteria within the broader strategic context of the R&D portfolios. Its foundation lies in mathematical theory of resource-constrained optimization with the goal to maximize quantitative returns. The book seeks to broaden the portfolio discussion in two ways. First, simplified models - appropriate for the data-poor NPD context - are developed, which attempt to illuminate the structure of the choice problem and robust qualitative rules of thumb, rather than detailed algorithmic decision support. Such robust rules can be applied in the R&D environment of poor data availability. Second, the annual portfolio review is not the only important choice in resource allocation. In addition, the book discusses how ideas might be pre-screened as they emerge, and how projects should be prioritized once they are funded and ongoing.

Identifying the origins of innovation and project management, this unique Handbook explains why and how the two fields have grown and developed as separate disciplines, highlighting how and why they are now converging. It explores the theoretical and practical connections between the management of innovation and projects, examining the close relationship between the disciplines.Chapters introduce new research examining how organisations manage innovative projects to compete in global markets and tackle some of the immense economic, social and environmental challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Leading scholars in the field examine the management of innovative projects in various forms and across diverse contexts, including R&D, new product development, agile, collaboration, trust and ambidexterity. The Handbook outlines efforts to cross-fertilise ideas from innovation and project management, share and create new concepts, and borrow theories from other disciplines to assist empirical research and develop a more integrated research agenda, offering practical guidance on how to manage innovative projects in real-world settings.Comprehensive and invaluable, this Handbook is a critical read for innovation management and project management scholars and students. Practitioners in both fields interested in developing their professional skills and acquiring thought leadership in a converging field will also benefit greatly from reading this.

What does excellent manufacturing management mean? Management texts to date have emphasized that it is, above methods such as SPC or TQM, a matter of "intangibles" and "culture". This book takes the myth out of management excellence; it can be learned and practiced: 1. Manage the four core processes, strategy formulation and deployment, product innovation, process development, and the supply chain, and 2. Pay attention to the seven dimensions of management quality, direction setting, integration, delegation, communication, participation, measurement, and employee development. Thus, we argue that an excellent manufacturing manager can move to a plant in a different industry and become, after an appropriate time to learn its specific technologies, an excellent manufacturing manager there as well. This book explains management quality and demonstrates how it is implemented, with nine plant tours through world-class factories from different industries.

“He who stops getting better has stopped being good. ” Hans Schneider, General Manager of the Siemens Amberg Electronics Factory, Industrial Excellence Award overall winner 2007 There is a general perception that inflexible labor markets and high labor costs are contributing to a massive displacement of manufacturing jobs and investment from Western Europe to Eastern Europe and Asia. The debate in Western Europe is highly charged, but sometimes ill-informed. It is true that some low-skilled jobs are moving into low labor cost countries. On the other hand, many more highly skilled jobs are actually being created in the highly developed countries. The total impact on Western economies is much more complicated, and there is some evidence of important benefits. In this book, we showcase examples of excellent industrial management that has managed to create substantial job growth in manufacturing. This book is based on 14 years’ observation of the Industrial Excellence Award (IEA) in Germany and France, the first ten years of which we summarized in our previous book, Industrial Excellence (Springer 2003), and on an additional five years of obser- tion between 2002 and 2007. We have seen that management’s first and noble responsibility to society is to achieve competitiveness. Competitive organizations create growth and jobs, even in Western Europe. Competitiveness requires clearly articulated strategic positioning, together with excellent execution, and mobili- tion of all employees to apply their abilities and to pull in one direction.

Dieses Buch beschreibt Fallbeispiele exzellenter Industrieunternehmen, die auf dem Weltmarkt wachsen und Arbeitsplätze in Westeuropa schaffen. Die Beispiele zeigen im Detail, wie Managementmethoden diese Unternehmen befähigen, ihre Strategie klar zu definieren und durchschlagskräftig in der Organisation umzusetzen und somit innerhalb Europas trotz hoher Arbeitskosten und regulatorischer Hemmnisse eine konkurrenzstarke Position zu schaffen. Diese erfolgreichen Unternehmen haben gemein, dass sie ihre Mitarbeiter fördern und mit definierten Methoden hinter einer klaren Strategie vereinen.Neben den konkreten Fallbeispielen, die als Leitfaden für Verbesserungsprogramme dienen können, gibt dieses Buch auch eine Orientierung zu strategischem "Offshoring" (der Verlagerung von Aktivitäten ins Ausland) und zeigt Führungskräften, wie das Unternehmen positiv zum gesellschaftlichen Umfeld beitragen kann und soll. Dieses Buch ist eine unverzichtbare Lektüre für alle Manager, die großes Interesse an einer Verbesserung ihrer Wettbewerbsfähigkeit haben.

In 1994, the idea for this project (we were not then thinking about a book) arose in a context of growing publicity surrounding prizes like the D- ing Award, the Malcolm Baldrige Award, and the European Quality Award, prompting us to ask: “Could we de?ne what world-class manufacturing is? It’s got to be more than managing processes. Are the US and Japan really in the lead, as so many examples suggest?” Xavier de Groote, our colleague in the Operations Management group at INSEAD, made a major contribution to the formulation of the ?rst version of our framework, the ?rst questi- naire, and the ?rst edition of the Industrial Excellence Award (IEA) in 1995. He witnessed the crowning of the ?rst winner, STMP Laval (which became Solvay Automotive soon afterwards and later Ingeny following its merger with Plastic Omnium). The answer to our initial questions can be found in this book. While the journey took seven years and was far from easy, we believe we have made some progress. We have awarded the IEA annually since 1995 in France, and in Germany since 1997. In the course of this effort, we have analyzed questionnaires from hundreds of plants, visited 100 of them, and given prizes to 30. We did not know what we might discover when we ?rst approached this undertaking but we came away deeply impressed.