Strategies promoting innovation in sustainable neighborhood (SN) projects – Lessons from complex and mega projects

Abstract

Statistics of GHG emissions and energy consumption are continuously reminding us of the urgent drive to promote environmentally sustainable urban neighborhoods and communities. Sustainable neighborhoods are increasingly becoming more popular since they offer opportunities that could be exploited in the change towards a low carbon society. This paper draws on innovation and project management literature in an attempt to describe the strategies and practices promoting innovation during the different stages of the sustainable neighborhood (SN) projects’ lifecycle, and illustrate how the project communicates innovation with its wider ecosystem. Moreover, we argue that sustainable neighborhood (SN) projects tend to have an ambidextrous nature, adopting different exploration and exploitation strategies in the front-end and back-end stages, respectively.