Project Networks—an Important—but Still Under-Researched Topic in Project Management Research

We are living in an interconnected world and this has clear implications for project management. A recent trend study from Schoper, Gemünden, and Nguyen (2016) showed that experienced practitioners and academic researchers participating in this survey expected an increase in globally dispersed project teams until 2025, using new means for their virtual communication, and requiring a higher level of interpersonal and intercultural skills. According to this study, projects will become even more complex, leading to a higher level of professionalization of project management, an increasing need for better governance of publicly financed projects, and more project-oriented organizations with higher levels of individual and organizational project management competences. The study also indicates that projects will be assessed as project businesses, which are done together with other partners in complex business ecologies, in order to develop and deliver innovative complex integrated solutions. This means that in an interconnected world of open innovation, an increasing share of value creation will be organized in the form of a project network. Project management research does not yet reflect this increasing importance of value creation by project networks.