Fostering success of collaborative research, development, and innovation projects through project management offices

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Publicly funded collaborative research, development, and innovation (CRDI) projects are increasingly promoted to tackle key societal challenges. However, the success of these projects is difficult to appraise, and the role of project management offices (PMOs) to potentiate the project success is not well understood. This study contributes to the debate about the effectiveness of projects in research and innovation by elucidating the relationship between the existence of a PMO and the success of CRDI projects, and the role that project management practices play in this regard. Using the lens of Ika and Pinto’s project success theoretical framework it was found that PMOs contribute to the success of CRDI projects by facilitating the use of relevant project management practices. From a practical point of view, organizations involved in CRDI projects can gain insights into how a PMO can foster project benefits, stakeholder alignment and knowledge management.