Delivery Model Innovation: Insights From Infrastructure Projects:

This special issue seeks to bring together contributions of a nascent community of scholars studying infrastructure delivery models; what they are, how they are created, and how they change over time and across institutional fields. This area of research is crucial to advancing the field of project management and, with its links to neighboring fields such as innovation, organizational theory, and strategic management, is a fertile ground for developing new insights and knowledge. Before we introduce the articles that make up the special issue, we describe the policy environment and drivers for innovation in infrastructure delivery models, situate infrastructure delivery models within project management scholarship, and provide some conceptual scaffolding for considering the nature of innovation in delivery models. We then turn to a discussion of how each article in the special issue advances our knowledge of delivery models and project management. Drawing inspiration from the articles, we conclude by sketching out the building blocks and core conceptual components of a delivery model, and laying the foundations for a more nuanced comparison of existing, emerging, and novel delivery models over time and across institutional fields.