Christophe Midler: ‘Challenges and perspectives of projectification for societal innovation in a fragmented and chaotic world’

Christophe Midler is the person responsible for coining (and initially defining) the term projectification in an article entitled Projectificaiton of the firm: the Renault case, and he is visiting us as part of a continues collaborative endeavor between European scholars interested in temporary and experimental forms of organization and organizing.

Midler will give a brief (30-40 min) lecture followed by an interactive discussion among participants. For short introduction of the talk, see below!

• Link to the Public Administration Theory Research Group at Political Science, Lund University
• Link to the Centre for Research on Democracy, Political Participation and Institutional Change at Helsinki University
• Link to the Centre for European Studies

Challenges and perspectives of projectification for societal innovation in a fragmented and chaotic world

Christophe Midler:

At the seminar, I  will focus on three characterizations of the current context of contemporary innovation strategies:

1. corporate innovations are what I will call more and more "societal", inducing the intrusion of political and administrative powers in the management of projects;
2. one of the consequences is that the globalization of the management of international companies is deeply affected. The world is no longer a "flat" market as some dreamed in the 2000s. It is a deeply fragmented world where innovation must be precisely adapted locally in its processes as it products to have a chance to succeed. How can be associate this localization with the global innovation deployment, a key capability for large companies to assert their competitive advantage?
3. Finally, the world is chaotic. Because it is no longer driven by a few dominant players who are able to impose their perspectives and plans not only on others, but also - and above all - on nature, which generates crises that thwart the plans of the wisest strategists.

What are the consequences of these characteristics of the contemporary context on projects, and, in return, what roles can projects play in taking them into account?

As I like to base my reasoning on empirical research, I will use here a study that I have just finished on a development of an electric car in China, a development led by the French manufacturer Renault, the same one that I had studied in 1995 in my Scandinavian Management Review article on projectification.

Back to the future…