Designing Infrastructure for Evolvability: Constraints on Collective Investments in Design Flexibility

Abstract

This study investigates a dilemma that inter-organizational collectives formed to develop new infrastructure face at the project front-end: either invest in flexible designs that cope with change in requirements, this is design to evolve — at risk the extra costs upfront will not pay off if the uncertainties fail to resolve favourably in the future. Or endorse cheaper but more rigid designs — at risk of higher adaptation costs if the uncertainties materialise later on. Through an inductive study, we reveal how the collectives invariably engage in ad hoc future-proofing discussions to address this dilemma. But faced with tight budgets, conflicting interests, and mutual ignorance, they struggle to design in flexibility. Through lab experiments, we unexpectedly find that a formal framework to facilitate multilateral future-proofing discussions and thus improve process efficiency fails to significantly impact on the development process and outcomes. Hence, we argue, infrastructure design for evolvability is a collective action problem constrained by its inter-organizational structure. We conclude by discussing how structural changes may enable infrastructure design organizations to exploit in full the complementarity between design flexibility and project risk management

Keywords: Design for Evolvability, Infrastructure, Flexibility, Options, Commons