Construction Innovation - 9781118655535

Innovation in the Built Environment

RICS Research

`On behalf of CIB and our membership I am very pleased to endorse this publication. It is a thought provoking and valuable contribution to research on innovation in the built environment I am confident that it provides important insights for anyone wishing to understand, to do research on, or to effectively manage innovation in or adjacent to the construction sector.'

Dr Wim Bakens, Secretary General, CIB

Construction innovation is an important but contested concept, both in industry practice and academic reflection and research. A fundamental reason for this is the nature of the construction industry itself: the industry and the value creation activities taking place there are multidisciplinary, heterogeneous, distributed and often fragmented.

This book takes a new approach to construction innovation, revealing different perspectives, set in a broader context. It coalesces multiple theoretical and practice-based views in order to stimulate reflection and to prepare the ground for further synthesis. By being clear, cogent and unambiguous on the most basic definitions, it can mobilise a plurality of perspectives on innovation to promote fresh thinking on how it can be studied, enabled, measured and propagated across the industry.

The book does not gloss over the real-life complexity of construction innovation. Instead, its authors look explicitly at the challenges that conceptual issues entail, and by making their own position dear, they open up fresh intellectual space for reflection.

Construction Innovation examines innovation from different positions and through different conceptual lenses to reveal the richness that the theoretical perspectives offer to our understanding of the way that construction sector actors innovate at both project and organizational levels.

The editors have brought together here leading scholars to deconstruct the concept of innovation and to discuss the merits of different perspectives, their commonalities and their diversity. The result is an invaluable sourcebook for those studying and leading innovation in the design, building and maintenance of our built environment.