Capital Project Management, Volume III: Evolutionary Forces - Paperback

by Robert N. McGrath (Author)

As an extension of Volumes I and II of this series, this book contains a detailed elaboration of the Tesla story, in a way that also serves to examine the interaction of technology and economic forces that determine the structural profitability of any industry, especially capital-intense industries. The economics are the "five forces" introduced to the management lexicon by strategic management scholars. Here there is strong emphasis on the interplay among product technology, production and supply chains, and "Wall Street."

The author is a retired business professor; his research interest has been the management of technology and innovation. For this book, he double-checked none of the 1,250 media items collected, accepting their overall veracity at face value. This approach advocates no one person, no one company, no one technology, and no portion of the global automobile industry. Analysis and practical application came foremost.

Author Biography

Dr. Robert N. McGrath, PhD, MBA, PMP, graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and served five years in logistics fields. He worked in aerospace environments as a logistician, engineer, and manager for Texas Instruments, General Electric Aircraft Engines, and the Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Company. He completed a PhD in business administration at LSU, and entered academia full-time. He served as MBA/EMBA program director, and was director of the largest online project management curriculum in the world. He has published over 75 scholarly, pedagogical, and practitioner items. In 2007, he became a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) and afterwards, taught mostly online. He is now retired to continue writing. His 1996 PhD dissertation addressed the electric vehicle industry of that day, a content analysis of 2,000 media items of biases for and against battery technologies as theory would predict. The events that have transpired since 1996 are consistent with that dissertation, motivating further study culminating in this book series.