Mirror-breaking strategies to enable digital manufacturing in Silicon Valley construction firms: A comparative case study

In construction, the mirroring of knowledge with tasks increasingly limits firm-level abilities to identify and pursue systemic innovation opportunities. Recent research identifies how integration strategies enable individual projects to break from this trap, but much less is known about potential strategic action of firms to enable systemic innovation. To explore this, a longitudinal comparative case study examines how three entrepreneurial firms–DPR construction, RAD Urban, and Project Frog–in the San Francisco Bay Area describe their own strategic evolution and restructuring of firm boundaries over the past five years to enable greater adoption of digital manufacturing. Each firm has developed a different approach–relational, project-based spinoff; vertical integration; or digital systems integration. Benefits and challenges are identified for each. The approaches are theorized as a form of strategic mirror-breaking intended to redefine the current paradigm of knowledge and task dependencies. They enable the firms to develop products with new system architectures and access more opportunities for innovation in digitally-enabled manufacturing. The paper concludes with discussion of how the identification and characterization of strategies for mirror-breaking enriches understanding of integration for systemic innovation in construction at the firm level. The paper identifies common themes for digitally-enabled manufacturing including the limitations of the current industry structure, the emergence of new hybrid positions, and the opportunity for platforms to provide longitudinal integration.