The management of projects and product experimentation: examples from the music industry

Abstract

Abstract The paper is conceptual, combining project and economic organization literatures in order to explain the organization and management of market‐based projects. It puts particular focus on projects set up in order to facilitate product innovation through experimentation. It investigates the internal vs market economies of scale and scope related to projects, as well as the issues of governance, planning and coordination related to reaping such economies. Incorporating transaction cost perspectives as well as considerations of labor markets, the paper explains the management of market‐organized innovation projects by virtue of localized project ecologies and local labor markets of leaders and boundary spanners. It illustrates its arguments with a case study of the recorded music industry.