Ph.D: Medarbejder-dreven innovation i statslige bygherreorganisationer

In recent years the Danish construction industry has earned the reputation of being a low-level and tradition bound industry focusing on short-term gains, instead of long term planning of development and innovation. When the industry booms, the industry gear up, man and machinery wise, and engage in as many projects as possible, disregarded the cost, more or less. In times of recession the companies gear down, and cut off all possible costs. Thus, the focus on development and innovation has rough conditions to survive in the industry.

The motivation factor in this PhD is to challenge the innovation culture of the construction industry, and investigate the conditions for Employee-driven innovation (EDI) and development. The larger project organisations mainly operate in the low-tech part of the construction industry and are depending on the knowledge and effectiveness of the employees in the various projects. This raises the question; how these larger project organisations can be more innovative in a low tech industry driven by the employee’s knowledge?

Through a focus on, how to generate most value in the daily work- and problem-solving processes, and in sequence increased revenue, the key source is the employees. The focus on the employees is based on, how to capture their tacit and spoken experience and knowledge, and utilize this in development and innovation of the organisation and its products and services.

There are many traditional ways to use the employee’s experiences in evaluation of the working processes in the organisation, e.g. team meetings, walk and talk session, evaluation schemes. A more recent methodology, in using employees in the development of organisations, is EDI. This approach adapts a systematic involvement of employees in the innovation process, centred on idea-generation from employees, and a framework that can transform these ideas into new tools or working processes. The outcome of this research should be a framework or a model/structure that in one end captures or contains ideas from employees all over the organisation, and in the other end ensures that the ideas are developed into new tools to optimise the processes and problem-solving in the company.