KILLING MUSHROOMS: THE REALPOLITIK OF TERMINATING INNOVATION PROJECTS

John A. Daly (), Alf Steinar Sætre () and Eric Brun ()
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John A. Daly: Department of Communication Studies and Management, University of Texas, Austin, 2504A Whitis Avenue, Austin, TX 78712-0115, USA
Alf Steinar Sætre: Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Alfred Getzv. 1, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Eric Brun: UiS Business School, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2012, vol. 16, issue 05, 1-30

Abstract: Successful organizations depend not only on highly successful ideas and projects, but also on terminating poorer projects so that they do not drain their intellectual and other resources. There is, however, evidence that organizations let many projects go on for too long before terminating them. This paper investigates managers' termination behaviors in the energy industry along two dimensions — termination and accommodation. Managers have two main concerns when terminating innovative ideas and projects. One is that the idea is actually abandoned (termination) and the other is that whoever came up with the idea does not become de-motivated when a project is terminated (accommodation). We explore the variance in the data to generate categories of termination and accommodation behaviors. We group our findings into seven major categories of termination strategies that vary with respect to accommodation. We then discuss three major features of accommodation strategies.

Keywords: Innovation projects; ambiguity; termination strategies; communication; accommodation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1142/S1363919612003861

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