Rajenlall Siriram

By Rajenlall Siriram

Project management is a complex process involving different stakeholders within and outside the firm. These stakeholders involve among others, the client who has the initial need, and establishes the project requirements and boundaries; the sales teams involved in developing the initial solution and sealing the contract with the client; the project management practitioners responsible for executing the solution as per the contractual requirements; different organizational units, such as engineering, finance, supply chain, health, and safety; and other stakeholders, such as sub-suppliers, legal authorities, consultants, and funding agencies. These stakeholders have different perspectives and objectives that make project management a complex process. In this chapter the challenges, benefits, and opportunities of inter-organizational integration, transition, and collaboration within and between firms in large complex projects are explored. The scope of this chapter is on the interface between the sales front-end phase and the project initiation phase because it is in the sales front-end, where the strategic and operational direction for the rest of the project is set and agreed. A better understanding of this interface may provide opportunities for improvement in project management success.

Part of the book: Project Management

By Rajenlall Siriram, Chantelle du Plessis and Frederick Rudolphus Bezuidenhout

Over the past several decades, there has been much debate on innovation and how innovation contributes to a firm’s competitive advantage and firm performance. Innovation can be competence-enhancing or competence-destroying. From a firm perspective, innovation can be classified into at least two broad categories, namely technological innovation, which is predominately new product development (product innovation) which includes architectural innovation from a product perspective and non-technological innovation, which includes at least process innovation, organizational innovation, marketing innovation, and service innovation. From an industry perspective, there is transformational innovation which is of such a nature that it destroys whole industries and changes the nature of society. In this chapter, we explore how the different types of innovation can be better understood and how they complement each other so that the firm can derive competitive advantages from the different types of innovation and improve firm performance.

Part of the book: Innovation

By Rajenlall Siriram, Chantelle du Plessis, Chanel Bisset and Ockert Koekemoer

Innovation provides many advantages in terms of competitive advantages; however, many firms fail to seize innovation opportunities. There are different types of innovation, namely product innovation, process innovation, architectural innovation, marketing innovation, service innovation, organisational innovation, and transformational innovation. The different types of innovation offer different opportunities across the product life cycle. In this chapter, some interesting questions are posed: (a) is it necessary to invest in all the different types of innovation, (b) can a firm benefit from one or two of the different types of innovation and (c) how important innovation timing is to extract maximum value across the product life cycle. Responses to these questions are explored, and insights are provided. Interesting lessons are provided to firms as these lessons may enable firms to improve innovation opportunities and competitive advantages.

Part of the book: Business and Management Annual Volume 2023

By Rajenlall Siriram and Chantelle du Plessis

The role of quality planning, assurance and control is well established in manufacturing and production environments; however, the same cannot be said for industrial projects and the services environment. It is evident that the tangibility of the output is different and, as a result, evaluated differently. In a project environment, many projects exceed budget, schedule and performance. One may argue that quality planning, control and assurance have a significant role in ensuring projects meet their budget, schedule and performance objectives. In contrast, in a services environment, quality planning, assurance and control procedures are used to ensure that the set of quality criteria meets the customer’s requirements so that the customer gets a better service experience. There are differences in how quality planning, assurance and control are implemented and perceived in these three environments. This chapter explores the differences and similarities in the implementation, perception and maturity of quality planning, assurance and control. This chapter provides interesting opportunities for quality planning, assurance and control in a manufacturing, projects and services environment.

Part of the book: Quality Control and Quality Assurance - Techniques and Applications [Working title]