Relating, reflecting and routinizing: Developing project competence in cooperation with others Jonas So ¨ derlund a,b, * , Anne Live Vaagaasar a , Erling S. Andersen a a BI Norwegian School of Management, 0442 Oslo, Norway b Management and Engineering, Linko ¨ ping University, Sweden Received 2 June 2008; accepted 3 June 2008 Abstract In a world where projects represent an increasingly important organizational and economic unit, the capability of generating and exe- cuting projects becomes critical for company performance and sustainability of firm-level competitiveness. Despite recent contributions to the area of project-capability building, many of the challenges remain largely unexplored areas of research. The aim of this paper is to increase our understanding of how firms develop competence in a focal project. To accomplish this, we use an in-depth study of a com- plex development and implementation project. Applying a ‘process approach’ to the study of project competence, we identify three sep- arate learning mechanisms: relating, reflecting and routinizing. We show how these mechanisms contribute mutually to the expansion and utilization of the resource base of the project. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved. Keywords: Competence; Capabilities; Projects; Project management; Relating; Reflecting; Routinizing 1. Co-creating project competence Project management research has shown increased attention to the processes of how to facilitate learning and competence development in project environments. Pre- vious research has looked at the criticality of inter-project learning and cross-project learning (e.g. [25,6]), and how projects may stimulate learning and thereby function as arenas for learning [20]. Given the ongoing ‘projectifica- tion’ of a number of industries and sectors, we would assume that the firm-level development of the ability to generate and execute projects is a determining factor for competitiveness and firm-level performance in the future. In other words, projects not only represent unique instances for generating new knowledge and communal learning, but they also provide firms with the possibility of using and re-using existent knowledge. However, the dual challenge of using what is already known and coming up with novel solutions seems to be particularly demanding in a project context. Although we will not give a complete answer to the exploration–exploitation dilemma facing project-intensive firms in this paper, we will offer a new and complementary way of analyzing the development of project competence. In line with Hedlund [11], we believe that studies of knowledge development and capability building, in gen- eral, should pay closer attention to the temporary project and its inter-organizational aspects. Such studies would not only improve the understanding of the practice of pro- ject management and learning in projects, but also improve the knowledge of the difficulties of establishing firm-level project competence and project capabilities (see e.g., [5,28,29]). The latter is important in gaining an understand- ing of the qualities of individual learning in an increasingly important work setting and for identifying important characteristics of ‘project-based learning’ [7]. 0263-7863/$34.00 Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.06.002 * Corresponding author. Address: BI Norwegian School of Manage- ment, 0442 Oslo, Norway. E-mail addresses: jonas.soderlund@liu.se, jonas.soderlund@bi.no (J. So ¨ derlund). www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman Available online at www.sciencedirect.com International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 517–526