José Coelho Rodrigues

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Abstract

Abstract
Project management is a critical success factor for any kind of project. When projects involve complex multi-organisational structures, requiring demanding collaborative processes, project management is a complex system in itself. Although this topic has been studied for decades, the ever-changing morphology of projects induced by the increasingly intricate financing schemes, call for a frequent and updated understanding of how the projects initiate, run, and close. Large-scale integrated collaborative projects are a recent example of complex collaborative projects that were not studied yet but can provide important insights for the project and innovation management fields. These projects are carried out typically by a large consortium including research organisations, sectorial technological centres, technology providers and end-user companies, having a significant impact on the technological innovation produced for a specific sector. This chapter reports a multiple case study of four large-scale integrated projects, in Portugal, following an inductive research design. The results showed that collaboration creation and collaboration management are crucial processes for such projects, with challenges intensified by the differences in goals and expectations of researchers and practitioners. The chapter will hopefully contribute to the future development of new models, tools and techniques that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this type of projects, by providing a systematisation of the challenges faced and how they were overcome during the cases analysed. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
The development of the Internet created new technologies that are changing the way of doing business, particularly Industry 4.0 in current days. One challenge of the implementation of new technologies is the change required from companies' business models. However, the literature concerning Industry 4.0 is mainly focused on technological innovations and less in their impact on business models. This paper aims to understand the impacts of the digitalization process inherent to Industry 4.0 on business models. To achieve this purpose, an exploratory multiple-case study based on semi-structured interviews was conducted in two Portuguese medium companies from two different sectors. Findings show that besides companies being able to change to a customer-oriented approach, individualized mass production may not be the only purpose of this transformation. Networking is particularly appealing for small and medium enterprises, once they usually have fewer resources to dedicate to innovation projects. Additionally, in the era of globalization, logistic costs are still an obstacle for serving international markets. Finally, social media are seen as an internal tool of communication for business-to-business companies. Being one of the first empirical studies of the Portuguese context, it aims to diminish the lack of literature concerning this particular topic and enable future researches on the use of business models as a management tool. Secondly, it intends to help managers develop or redesign business models adjusted to a more dynamic and competitive environment. © 2021 IEEE.