Toward a genealogy of project management: Sidewinder and the management of exploratory projects

Sylvain Lenfle
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Sylvain Lenfle: THEMA - Théorie économique, modélisation et applications - UCP - Université de Cergy Pontoise - Université Paris-Seine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CRG I3 - Centre de recherche en gestion i3 - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - Université Paris-Saclay - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This paper deals with the management of exploratory projects, i.e. projects where neither the goals nor the means to attain them can be defined at the beginning. It relies on the historical case study of the Sidewinder Air-to-Air missile, designed by the US Navy between 1947 and 1957. The case is interesting because it violated all the best practices of PM, yet involved a short and cheap development process that resulted in a best-seller in missile history. This case thus helps to analyze the inner working of an understudied skunkworks (project-level) and to discuss the governance of exploratory projects (firm-level), more specifically the limits of Stage-Gate processes for radical innovations.

Keywords: Exploratory projects; Genealogy; Sidewinder; Experimentation; Skunkworks; Stage-Gate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
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Published in International Journal of Project Management, 2014, 32 (6), pp.921 - 931. ⟨10.1016/j.ijproman.2013.10.017⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01500292

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2013.10.017

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