ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on how the process discontinuities help or hinder the development and use of technological innovations in building, both as a process and as a product. The off-site volumetric and development of complete building solutions was developed through a long-term series of entrepreneurial product and process innovations that created a direct link between the client and the producer. To bring an innovative product to market in the construction sector, the innovator must overcome the discontinuities, especially in the horizontal dimension where different organizations are responsible for only part of a project. The chapter explores how an innovative technology gets to the market and examines how the multiple obstructions to innovation may be overcome in practice. Two theoretical bases are adopted: transaction cost economics explains make-or-buy decisions at multiple tiers and business development explains how different companies in the process respond to the way that demand is put to them and how markets for products are developed.