Project management involves time and effort, but it can also be a friend of the start-up. There are two reasons that project management is important. First, project management assists in dealing with complexity and time pressure. Many organizational tasks are difficult, and from the perspective of the entrepreneur, they are close to rocket science because the number of hands for completing tasks are so few. Project management is structured problem solving and it assists with problem decomposition and with managing the risk inherent in product and service development. Even though the focus of this book has been on product differentiation, many products and services also suffer from too much differentiation and feature creep.
Features are critical for maintaining an edge over the competition in the context of monopolistic competition, but there is some point where products need to be delivered and specifications stabilized. Project management is there to assist in converging on a satisfactory solution to problems related to delivering products and services by freezing the specifications. The specs are not frozen for long; perhaps a couple of weeks, a month, or even two, until it is time to renew the innovation process and develop an upgraded product.
Another important feature of project management is that it is very useful in developing and maintaining localized managerial and scientific knowledge related to core competencies and know-how. Project management assists in formalizing the learn-by-doing and learning-about processes into the genetic foundations of the emerging organization.
