Drivers for Innovation in Production Management

The aim of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of innovative programmes in construction. The term 'best practice' is commonly used in industry in to describe and disseminate cases where high levels of performance have been achieved. Several terminologies are used to describe this phenomenon, the best practice being the most widely used term. Best practices usually stimulate a desire in other companies to achieve similar levels of performance or gains that have been obtained by those best practice companies. This desire for better performance commonly triggers an innovation adoption programme by other companies. However, there are two kinds of drivers to innovation adoption: one is usually started by normative pressures applied by customers, suppliers, regulators or senior management. This type of adoption is called push-driven. On the other hand, there is a pull-driven innovation adoption decision, which is triggered strictly by an internal need associated with a performance gap. Based on this background this paper explores the generation, development and adoption of innovative programmes by industry.