Barriers

Barriers to Innovation

The infrastructure development and construction industry is fragmented along multiple axis – it is fragmented across technical disciplines and sectors, along project lifecycle phases, and by individual projects and project team.

The fragmented nature of the industry creates significant barriers to the diffusion of many types of technological, financial, organizational, and procedural innovations. Past research has demonstrated that energy efficiency innovations that cut across discipline, trade and supply chain boundaries are implemented far less often than those that can be implemented within a single "swim lane" within the industry.

Our ongoing research, jointly funded by the GPC and Stanford’s Center for Integrated Facilities Engineering (CIFE) is exploring the extent to which Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) alliance contracting approaches can overcome some of these barriers to innovation in hospital projects.