The proper call for papers are found Short version here, and a Longer version here

Exploratory Projects

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS:

Sylvain Lenfle, Professor,
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers & Centre de Recherche en Gestion, Ecole Polytechnique, France

Christophe Midler, Research Director, Centre de Recherche en Gestion, CNRS/ Ecole Polytechnique, France

Markus Hällgren, Professor,
Umeå School of Business & Economics, Sweden

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSIONS: FEBRUARY 2018

The strategic roles of innovation and exploration in today’s competitive environment have given birth to a research stream in the management of exploration projects for which neither the goals nor the means to attaining them are clearly de ned from the outset. This work bridges the project, innovation, entrepreneurship, and discovery management literature and has led to a new approach
to projects as experimental learning processes for which new management principles, such as selectionism and sequential learning, have been de ned. From the same perspective, this literature underlines the need to differentiate between the management processes for exploratory projects, since the traditional stage-gate approach generally leads to failure, and to design new evaluation methods adapted to their “expansive” nature. We are only at the beginning of the research; thus, the goal of this special issue is to continue to develop the research on exploratory projects. More precisely, we welcome contributions in the following areas:

1. Research that sheds new light on the actor’s practices in exploratory projects.
2. The validity of the management principles proposed in the literature.
3. The functions and roles of the actors in teams involved in exploratory projects.
4. The relationship between the project and its parent organization.
5. The role of exploratory projects in creation of the ecosystem.
6. The type of cognitive process used during these types of projects.

We welcome all research methods (contemporary case study, quantitative analysis, historical research, and so forth), along with research coming from adjacent elds (entrepreneurship, management of extreme situations, and so forth).

SUBMISSIONS

Full papers must be submitted by 28 February 2018 via the journal submission site. Papers accepted for publication but not included in the special issue will be published later in a regular issue of the journal. If you have any additional questions, please consult any of the guest editors.

For further information please contact one of the guest editors of this special issue: sylvain.len e@lecnam.net / christophe.midler@polytechnique.edu / markus.hallgren@umu.se