Evolutionary Learning in Strategy-Project Systems

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Introduction

The origins of this research lie in an event organized by an oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates, at which one of the authors—Paul Gardiner—was invited to speak about the challenges of project management in the company and how the company could learn to do projects better. The event was a part of the company’s strategic focus, which at the time was on knowledge sharing throughout the organization. As an oil and gas company, the company knew very well how to find oil reserves and how to get oil out of the ground. What it realized it was less good at was how to manage the internal strategic projects that were becoming more frequent, more complex, and more important to remaining competitive ...