Are Innovations Being Created or Adopted in the Construction Industry? Exploring Innovation in the Construction Industry

Abstract

The recent debate on innovation within an organizational setting has shifted focus toward discussing whether innovation is being adopted or being created. This shift is due to the failure of many innovation efforts and the fact that for each innovation creation or innovation adoption, different skills, resources, and cultures are needed to encourage each innovation. The objective of this article is to explore the type of innovation implemented by the construction participants. A conceptual model of innovation creation and innovation adoption was developed using four criteria: by justification of new ideas, by purposes, by activities involved, and by nature. Face-to-face questionnaires were conducted with developers, consulting firms, and contractors in Penang, Malaysia. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. Factor analysis was used to classify the innovation creation and innovation adoption. The results show that the construction participants in Malaysia are categorized as an innovation adopter. This result provides better understanding about the type of innovation implemented by the construction participants, in particular the contractors and the consulting firms. The results could also be used as a foundation for conducting future research to identify appropriate skills, knowledge, culture, and resources for such innovations.

Impact of Lean Manufacturing Practices on Firms’ Sustainable Performance: Lean Culture as a Moderator

“…Close contact with customers, involving them in product design, and exchanging information with customers as practices of customer relationships lead to identifying the needs of customers and consequently sustaining their loyalty through product, service, process differentiation from competitors, and strive to add value (Li et al, 2005). Innovative relationships with customers are one of the results of implementing a lean manufacturing concept [68,71]. Customers play a central role in developing innovative production systems [21].…”

Practitioners' experiences with the drivers and practices for implementing sustainable construction in Nigeria: a qualitative assessment

“…Even though the construction industry has been accused of being slow to respond to innovations such as sustainable construction (Ercan, 2019; Yusof, 2014; Opoku and Ahmed, 2014; Okae Adow et al , 2013), it has started to adopt sustainable construction to combat the environmental, social and economic issues arising from construction activities. Sustainable construction is simply construction that is environmentally friendly, socially responsible and economically viable.…”

Exploring Disruptive Thinking Possibilities in Construction and Engineering

“…One Other research has adopted a more constructive appraisal of what might facilitate better / faster innovation uptake in construction and engineering. These facilitating factors include a requirement that construction firms have suitable business strategies to break the mould and enable systemic innovations (Hall et al, 2020) and that construction firms need to respond to innovation to sustain competitive advantage and capture the derived short-term profits as new or altered markets emerge (Gajendran et al, 2014); that "climate innovation" and "innovation value-fit" are significant factors to 'make or break' innovation implementation success in projects (Mollaoglu-Korkmaz et al, 2014) and the need to solve technical problems (Pellicer et al, 2014); that there can be an organisational "innovation narrative" where organisational activities become labelled as innovations through the process of collective inter-subjectivity and have been used in those organisations as a tool to establish and maintain the legitimacy of the organisation's innovation (Sergeeva, 2014); that there is a clear understanding that each innovation needs different skills, resources, and cultures to encourage adoption (Yusof et al, 2014); that incentive motivation for an innovation implementation in infrastructure projects is perceived as high rather than low stakes (Eriksson and Kadefors, 2015); and that there is clear leadership (Ling, 2003;Nam and Tatum, 1997;Pellicer et al, 2014;Weidman et al, 2016) There is also a detailed literature on innovation adoption outside of construction and engineering which identified key drivers and inhibitors in innovation adoption across many domains (Bogers et al, 2017;Wisdom et al, 2014). The key drivers for innovation adoption identified in that research include: desire for improved competitiveness (Frambach and Schillewaert, 2002); working within government policy requirements (Aarons et al, 2011;Mitchell et al, 2010;Rogers, 2010); organisational capacity to take on innovation (Aarons et al, 2011;Feldstein and Glasgow, 2008;Frambach and Schillewaert, 2002); organisational commitment (Feldstein and Glasgow, 2008;Mitchell et al, 2010); cost efficacy, workability and risk associated with the innovation…”