(2002). Cool Projects, Boring Institutions: Temporary Collaboration in Social Context. Regional Studies: Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 205-214.

This paper is motivated by the intention to contribute to a contextual understanding of projects. More specifically, the analysis starts from the assumption that essential processes of creating and sedimenting knowledge accrue at the interface between projects and the organizations, communities, and networks in and through which projects operate. By adopting such a contextual perspective, the chief aim of the present study is to unfold a conceptual framework for analyzing processes of project-based learning. This conceptual framework is built around the notion of the project ecology. By consecutively disentangling the constitutive layers of project ecologies — the core team, the firm, the epistemic community, and the personal networks — the basic organizational architecture of project ecologies is revealed. This architecture is employed as a theoretical template for an exploration of learning processes in two ecologies which are driven by opposing logics of creating and sedimenting knowledge. In this comparative analysis, the cumulative learning logic of the software ecology in Munich is confronted with the disruptive learning regime in the London advertising ecology.

In economic geographic analysis, the 'firm' usually is assumed, at least implicitly, as a coherent and unitary economic actor. More recently, however, the integrity of the firm as the basic analytical unit has been undercut by organizational practices which are built instead around 'projects'. By taking up this theoretical challenge, this paper ventures an empirical investigation in which the project features as the central unit of economic action. However, rather than assuming a substitution of the firm by temporary projects, the paper seeks to explore interdependencies between projects and firms as well as other more traditional 'permanent forms' of organization. Against the empirical background of the London advertising industry, the paper delves into the interrelation between projects on the one hand and, on the other, the agencies, personal ties, localities and corporate networks which provide essential sources for project-based organizing. By consecutively embedding projects into these different organizational and social layers, the paper unfolds a space of collaborative practices for which the term project ecology will be proposed. D'habitude dans l'analyse économico-géographique, on suppose, du moins implicitement, que 'l'entreprise' constitue un agent économique cohérent et unitaire. Toujours est-il que, plus récemment, l'intégritéde l'entrepise comme outil de base analytique a été sapée par des pratiques organisationnelles fondées plutôt sur la notion de 'projets'. En relevant ce défi théorique, cet article cherche à fournir un examen empirique dans lequel le projet existe comme l'unité centrale des mesures économiques prises. Cependant, au lieu de supposer la substitution des projets temporaires à l'entreprise, l'article cherche à examiner les interdépendances entre des projets et des entreprises aussi bien que des 'formes permanentes' d'organisation plus traditionnelles. Sur le fond empirique de la publicité à Londres, l'article examine la corrélation entre, d'un côté, les projets et, de l'autre côté, les agences, les liens personnels, les endroits et les réseaux d'entreprise qui constituent des sources essentielles d'organisation fondée sur la notion de projets. En ancrant consécutivement des projets dans ces différentes couches organisationnelles et sociales, l'article dévoile un espace de pratiques en collaboration appellé l'écologie de projet . In (wirtschafts-)geographischen Untersuchungen wird das 'Unternehmen' in der Regel, zumindest implizit, als kohärenter und einheitlicher ökonomischer Akteur begriffen. Diese analytische Integrität des Unternehmens als Grundeinheit wissenschaftlicher Untersuchung wird in jüngerer Zeit allerdings durch organisatorische Praktiken in Frage gestellt, deren zentraler Bezugspunkt nicht das Unternehmen sondern das 'Projekt' darstellt. Anstatt allerdings von einer Substitution des 'permanenten' Unternehmens durch 'temporäre' Projekte auszugehen, interessiert sich dieses Papier vor allem für die Interdependenzen zwischen Projekten und Unternehmen sowie anderen permanenten Organisationsformen. Vor dem empirischen Hintergrund der Londoner Werbeindustrie analysiert dieses Papier die organisationalen und sozialen Beziehungen zwischen Projekten einerseits, den Unternehmen, persönlichen Netzwerken, dem lokalen Milieu und den übergeordneten Unternehmensverflechtungen andrerseits. In dem Projekte aufeinander abfolgend in diese unterschiedlichen Kontexte eingebettet werden, umreisst dieses Papier die Konturen des organisationalen und physischen Raumes, in dem sich die temporäre Kooperation in Projekten entfaltet. In Abgrenzung von mehr etablierten wirtschaftsgeographischen Begriffen wie Industrial District, innovatives Milieu oder regionales lnnovationssystem wird für diesen Raum temporärer Projektkooperation der Begriff Projektökologie vorgeschlagen.

In the 1980s, the hegemony of the large US advertising networks has been challenged by a new breed of London-based agencies who pioneered what is known in the trade as ‘second wave’. On the one hand, second wave implied the emancipation of Soho from an ‘outpost of Madison Avenue’ to the ‘advertising village’ on the basis of momentous product and process innovations. On the other hand, a few London agencies rose to global top positions on the crest of the second wave by transforming themselves from international advertising networks into global communication groups. This paper starts from the assumption that both, the localised cluster of advertising agencies in the advertising village (the ‘Village’) and the global communications group (the ‘Group’), share basic principles of social organisation. It aims at demonstrating that the organisational logic of both the Village and the Group can be conceptualised in terms of a heterarchy. By drawing on case-study evidence from Soho on the one hand and from the world leading communications business, WPP, on the other, the five basic features of heterarchies—diversity, rivalry, tags, projects, and reflexivity—will provide the conceptual tools for the investigation into the social organisation of the Village and the Group.

This paper seeks to contrast two opposing logics of project-based learning. Accumulation and modularization of knowledge denote the key imperatives of a learning logic that is exemplified by the software ecology in Munich. Learning is geared towards moving from ‘one-off’ to repeatable solutions. This cumulative logic is juxtaposed with a discontinuous learning regime that is driven by the maxims of originality and creativity. ‘Learning by switching’ here signifies the emblematic knowledge practice that is exemplified by the London advertising ecology. The paper explores these learning modes by subsequently exploring processes of learning and forgetting within and between the core team, the firm, and the epistemic community tied together for the completion of a specific project. In addition, the paper also directs attention to more diffuse learning processes in an awareness space that extends beyond and beneath the actual production ties. Instead of mapping the awareness space along a simplistic scalar nesting of network density and knowledge types (reduced to the notorious global vs local dichotomy), the paper proposes a differentiation that primarily involves different social and communicative logics. Whereas communality signifies lasting and intense ties, sociality signifies intense and yet ephemeral relations and connectivity indicates transient and weak networks.