Integrating Stakeholder and Social Network Analysis into Innovation Project Management

Abstract

This paper addresses a way to analyze the dynamically evolving social context of innovation projects complementary to traditional project management methods and tools. This social context being decisive for any project’s success or failure, it proposes a Social Network Analysis (SNA) based approach to identify, visualize, and systematically analyze project stakeholders, their personal roles and attitudes towards the project, as well as their mutual interrelationships. This approach has been implemented as an extension to the naviProM methodology and toolset published earlier by the authors. Based on the analysis of an innovation project case study in a complex corporate environment, the proposed approach is explained and validated.