Projects, Capabilities, and Innovation: Rome’s Jubilee as Vanguard Project for the Italian Civil Protection Department

This chapter examines how the Italian Civil Protection Department developed its capabilities for handling major public events. Section 1 provides an introduction to project capabilities and their role in innovation. Section 2 discusses the case of the Italian Civil Protection Department. The case highlights the role of vanguard projects as formative events for participants. These formative events produced social networks that remained at the core of the Civil Protection Department activities, and supported economies of repetition in following projects. These social networks also provide the context for the contribution of expertise from different participant organizations and for the use of artifacts embodying past experience to coordination of activities. Here economies of recombination take place complemented by adaptation and by ad-hoc activities. Thus, the section highlights the role of social networks and artefacts as the micro-conditions to create and redeploy of project capabilities. Section 3 concludes by highlighting directions for further research.