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Egbu, C O (1999) Mechanisms for exploiting construction innovations to gain competitive advantage. In: Hughes, W (Ed.), Proceedings 15th Annual ARCOM Conference, 15-17 September 1999, Liverpool, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, Vol. 1, 115–23.

  • Type: Conference Proceedings
  • Keywords: competitive advantage; innovation strategy; intellectual capital; knowledge management
  • ISBN/ISSN: 0 9534161 2 7
  • URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/ar1999-115-123_Egbu.pdf
  • Abstract:
    The paper reports some findings of a 2-year study on innovation sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which involved four case studies from four different innovative construction organizations, over 50 ethnographic interviews, company archive documents and video capture of innovative processes and products. The study explored a variety of issues such as types and sources of construction innovations, innovation strategy, climate and culture for innovation, risks in innovation and the formation of internal and external linkages to exploit organizational innovations. This paper, however, focuses on the mechanisms which construction organizations put in place to successfully exploit and benefit from innovations. It also examines the importance of an innovation strategy for the successful management of innovations. The paper shows that the important mechanisms for exploiting construction innovations include collaboration and building capability, novelty, stretching basic model product/process, providing complexity in technologies and increasing entry barriers. Other mechanisms are, being focused on a particular market niche, the continuous movement of the cost performance frontier and the management of knowledge and intellectual capital assets. The study concludes that innovations provide competitive advantages for organizations when organizations fully exploit their dynamic capabilities by mobilizing knowledge, experience and technological skills within a supportive organizational context.