So, I had been working on blog about the new edition of the PMBOK but as I started to fall asleep writing the blog, I realized the entry was almost as boring the PMBOK itself. So, I decided to write a few inconclusive, incomplete ideas that kept me awake the other night.
For whatever reason, about 2 in the morning I had a lot of time to think about the role of Innovation in the project management space. These random thoughts were rooted in a
conversation I had last week about using Innovation to pull the world economy back together. The general line of thought I was considering was, how do you do game-changing innovation in the Project Management world? I posed this question last November at a PM Executive forum and the answer I got a classic PMP test response: innovation happens continually (in the monitor and control process group) as the project manager makes continual adjustments to hit milestones. I realize now that that response fell flat with me because it did not embody the earth-shattering game-changing innovation that has the potential to move markets. Now the spontaneous, creative and (calculated) risk-taking side of me insists there must be room for game-changing innovation in Project Management, but the hyper-organized “I-implemented-a-kanban-system for my closet” PM side says that kind of chaos has no place in projects.
What do you think, is there room for paradigm-shifting innovation in the project management world, or should we be content with kaizen like process improvements?
Shawn Grubb
The Critiques