4000ENG/7001ENG Research Methods: Innovation in Complex Projects

This assignment presents a literature review and research plan focused on analyzing the challenges of innovation within highly complex projects, using Boeing's Dreamliner experience as a case study. It outlines the research methods, including mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative), data collection strategies involving secondary company information and primary interviews with current and former employees, and statistical methods for hypothesis testing. The literature review examines the difficulties faced during the Dreamliner project, such as delays and cost overruns, attributing them to factors like a lack of well-established frameworks, inadequate planning, and insufficient integration between technological innovation and organizational complexity. The review concludes by highlighting the benefits of contingency planning and suggesting avenues for future research to better understand innovation in complex projects. Desklib offers a variety of resources to aid students in their academic endeavors.

Research Methods for Engineers
Name
Institutional affiliation.

Title: The Challenge of Innovation in Highly Complex Projects: What Can We Learn from
Boeing’s Dreamliner Experience?
Abstract
Understanding the relationship between the complexity and innovation can be sometimes very
difficult. Innovation has faced differ challenges which even managers who are in this field may
not be able to handle at some point. This challenges have received very limited attention and
very lithe theory development in terms of research have been applied. The article in review
presents an analysis of the difficulties experienced during development of the project of a highly
innovating of the Dreamliner aircraft. During the innovation the project suffered an extensive
complex problem such as delays, and cost of the production (Ersavas & Pekol, 2017). This paper
presents an analysis of the project complexities and how such complexities were overcome. The
project uses several frameworks to produce and draw a roadmap that is more integrative in the
view of the challenges that is possible and provide an alternative measures to address the
challenges faced during this face and period. The research also offer an insight for the project
complexities and future recommendation in case the problem is faced again.
Methodology
Research method
In this part, the researcher presents the method that will be used to collect data. The specific area
to cover included the study design, the target population to be involved in the study and the
sampling design to be employed in the study.

Information regarding the data collection methods employed by the research, procedures of
conducting the research as well as methods used to analyses the data collected based on the
hypothesis is presented. The validity and reliability tests are also covered, together with a
mention of the ethical consideration employed by the researcher (Lin, 2016). The research design
explains how the study will be conducted and more so paying attention to detailed issue that
were basically added from the begging of the study such problem faced by Boeing. The main
hypothesis is the problem faced by wen handling big projects.
In this regard, the study design used in this research was able to help anticipate the kind of
appropriate research decisions which was considered as maximum validity of the overall results.
For this research mixed design methods was used because it combines both the aspect of
quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative methods has always proven useful in most
of the research because it handles the numerical part of the research. On the other and, qualitative
methods is important for the research because it presents and adopts the research subject point of
view. Most researcher have noted that quantitative methods alone are not enough to assess the
variable change in the research (Lindlof, & Taylor,2017). Due to this, using both method shades
light on which variable responsible for what change. This was also responsible for explaining the
results of the research and finding that is to be achieved. Apart from quantitative methods, the
data collection method to be used in the research is questioneeir and sampling methods. The
data will be collected from different sources. The first source will be secondary source which
include information about the company. The second source is the primary source which include
interviewing the current manager and the former employee of the company.
Literature review

Boeing was founded in the year 1916 and from then, the managers of this companies has made it
become one of the most successful companies in the world. It is ranked the largest manufacturing
companies in the world. In September 26 2011 the company publicly made it to the list of the
most fortune company by getting top 500. At this time the company announced the delivery of
787 dream liners transport capacity to its first customers. However, due to technicalities in
innovation, this event took place almost 40 months later (Bernard, 2017)). One of the reason why
the project took longer to achieve was the fact that the cost of the project seemed very high and
could not be meet by the company at that time. Anther difficulties that was faced was the
discovery of malfunctioning of some parts that was noticed later in the year. Want cause this
discovery was the presence of lithium which was discovered after the project took off. This
problem later led to months of grounding that was actually imposed by the federation of
administration and it affected the entire Dreamliner fraternity.
Many researchers has shown that the company lacked a well-established framework such as
allocation of planners and hiring specialized team to handle their projects. This made the team
understand that they needed to add more design cycle to the original plan. This could have been
prevented if the company had hired the right personnel for the job (Greenfield & Greener, 2016).
They also needed to build more prototype for testing. Some corrective measures that also
contributed to delays and higher cost of development were also put in place unknowingly. This
may have been avoided if correct design and framework could have been followed.
Most researcher also states that the development of the Dreamliner seemed more complex than
the original plan (Klein & Knight,2015)). This is explained by scholars to have been contributed
by lack of initial plan at the start of the project. The management team were involved in
outsourcing equipment and developing a new models. Due to this the project lacked

organizational support, system support and managerial support and that is why it took long. It is
also important to note that the interface between the technological innovation and organizational
complexity was very important (Shenhar & Zhao, 2016). This integration was to be done
immediately after the development of the system. As per the research, the time required for the
integration was not put into consideration at the start of the project. This led to underestimate of
finishing time of the project. The original time allocation was two months which proved difficult
for the entire project collection.
In conclusion, the analysis shown that there are several benefits that the highly complex and
innovative may actually benefit when they adopt the contingency. One main lesson from such a
project failure is that several project can apply similar contingency to achieve its goal.
Researchers can explore different ways to understand the different among innovation.

References
Shenhar, A. J., Holzmann, V., Melamed, B., & Zhao, Y. (2016). The Challenge of Innovation in
Highly Complex Projects: What Can We Learn from Boeing's Dreamliner Experience?. Project
Management Journal, 47(2), 62-78.
Bernard, H. R. (2017). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative
approaches. Rowman & Littlefield.
Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2017). Qualitative communication research methods. Sage
publications.
Greenfield, T., & Greener, S. (Eds.). (2016). Research methods for postgraduates. John Wiley &
Sons.
Ersavas, B. F., Ersavas, P., & Pekol, S. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,829,869. Washington, DC:
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Lin, F. H. (2016). U.S. Patent No. 9,229,080. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.
Klein, K. J., & Sorra, J. S. (2016). The challenge of innovation implementation. Academy of
management review, 21(4), 1055-1080.
Klein, K. J., & Knight, A. P. (2015). Innovation implementation: Overcoming the challenge.
Current directions in psychological science, 14(5), 243-246.