Getting New Things Done by David Obstfeld

Getting New Things Done by David Obstfeld

Author:David Obstfeld [Obstfeld, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2017-04-19T04:00:00+00:00


5

Mobilizing to Advance Creative Projects: NewCar’s Prototype Parts Purchasing Activity

Having outlined a conceptual framework for how organizations innovate both through creative projects and organizational routines (Chapter 3), and having used ethnographic data to illustrate how brokerage and knowledge articulation account for routine-based innovation (Chapter 4), I now turn to an ethnographic case study in the same automotive setting to illustrate the emergence of creative projects launched in pursuit of innovation. Specifically, this chapter depicts how an automobile manufacturer’s prototype parts purchasing (PPP) routine contrasts with two creative projects undertaken to redesign it.

In Chapter 3, based on Strauss’s theories of action (Strauss et al. 1985; Strauss 1993), I provided an action framework that distinguished between the trajectories associated with creative projects and organizational routines. What sets creative projects apart from routines is the novel trajectory projection that motivates and guides new, nonroutine action distinct from the repetitive action associated with routines.

I now turn to field observations, again focused on AllCar, NewCar, and the G5, that illustrate this distinction. In particular, I draw on my observations, first of AllCar’s prototype parts purchasing (PPP) routine, and then of two initiatives aimed at replacing that routine.1 I elaborate how trajectory strategy, consisting of the trajectory projection and scheme, and trajectory management, consisting of knowledge articulation, brokerage activity, and an additional category emerging from my field data, “contingency management,” impact the two projects’ adoption.

The PPP-related creative projects that I focus on represent two interrelated initiatives. First, a small but diverse group of middle managers from several divisions at AllCar combined efforts to pursue a major change in the corporate-wide PPP routine, which they believed to be costly and inefficient. Second, and concurrently, the G5 program manager, Dan, who was well aware of the AllCar initiative, endeavored to create a new prototype procurement unit to manage the G5 prototype build process. Both PPP-related creative projects were spurred by a vision of how prototype part purchasing at AllCar might be remade, as well as an accompanying scheme regarding how such a redesign might be accomplished.

To lay the groundwork for how the two creative projects emerged, I begin by describing the “cowboy culture” introduced in the Introduction—a culture imprinted within NewCar that gave rise to behaviors through which creative projects were pursued.

“Cowboy Culture” at NewCar

The Mayflower Road Office Building (MROB) that housed NewCar was long known for fostering an entrepreneurial spirit.2 Originally built in 1927 for the design and manufacture of home appliances, and used during World War II for the manufacture of helicopters, the building over the next seven decades had served as automotive design headquarters for seven different automotive-related companies, most of which were undercapitalized and therefore forced to do more with less. Many of NewCar’s employees were quite aware of the building’s scrappy, inventive, risk-taking history. In an interview, a former automotive CEO who had started his career at MROB but hadn’t set foot in the building for over fifteen years remarked:

[The company] was not bureaucratic. It had a loosely designed organization chart. It was freer swinging, informal, exciting.



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