PMI India Research and Academic Conference 2019

The Project Management Research & Academic Conference is a three-day professional development event and the fifth in the series of Research & Academic Conferences (RAC) conducted by Project Management Institute (PMI) India biennially since 2011. The RAC 2019 is being hosted by Indian Institute of Management (IIMK), Kozhikode and co-hosted by Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITMK), Trivandrum.

Globalization has led to increased competition across the world forcing most of the services and manufacturing industries (like telecom, pharma, IT & ITES, R&D, automobiles, space, airlines, electronics) to undergo a tectonic shift in the way their business was traditionally conducted. Businesses that manage to restructure themselves and operate successfully into projectized organizations have achieved time-to-market agility. A large portion of the success has also been attributed to the significant technology development during the third industrial revolution (also known as Digital Revolution-lasting close to three decades) with the introduction of computer, internet, Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The digital revolution era enhanced computational power enabling generation and analysis of data on a scale never before imagined which allowed the reorganization/transformation of services and manufacturing. This revolution also impacted project at various stages of its lifecycle.

Subsequently, the world of disruptive innovation has emerged providing access to tools like Blockchains, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), 3-D Printing, Big Data Analytics. These are part of Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0). In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies are expected to impact all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human. These technologies have great potential to continue to connect billions more people to the web and drastically improve the efficiency of business as well as help regenerate the natural environment through better asset management with the potent to even undo all the damage previous industrial revolutions have caused. But there are also grave potential risks being identified in general.

The conference theme on "Project management in the emerging world of disruption" tries to answer some of the possible roles of these technologies on a project environment.