Building relationships for technological innovation

Because the construction industry often is characterised by adversarial relations, the corresponding lack of cooperation has been seen as a major contributing cause for the low level of innovation in the construction industry. Therefore, many initiatives try to address the lack of innovation by attempting to increase cooperation between companies.

By taking empirical data from two projects that are actively trying to organise technological innovation in a cooperative manner across firm boundaries as the point of departure, we illustrate and discuss challenges with introducing relationships and networks as an organisational form in the construction industry. We investigate the outcome of such active initiatives in terms of the creation of relationship substance for technological innovation. Furthermore, we scrutinise and discuss how these results were affected by the existing structure of the construction industry.