Integrating functional knowledge and embedding learning in new product launches: how project forms helped EMI music

The article investigates whether and how the use of project-based structures can address the challenges of knowledge creation, retention and transfer in new product development processes. These issues are particularly problematic in the so-called ‘creative’ industries (movies, music, publishing, etc.), where getting marketing to work together with the creative side is a complex task, and where traditional sequential models for NPD seem to perform badly. The article analyses a recent strategy by EMI Music to use projects for organizing the launch of promising new releases onto the music market. Through an in-depth qualitative analysis of two relevant cases, the article illustrates how projects assist in integrating marketing and creative people (and their knowledge) in a purposeful way, and disseminating the consequential learning across initiatives. Project forms in creative industries are able to combine different types of knowledge and align different purposes across launch functions by synchronizing sequential activities and establishing joint decision making rules. They can also improve knowledge retention and diffusion among sequential initiatives, by creating artefacts where knowledge can be stored and re-used in other launches, and by removing organizational disincentives to knowledge sharing.