Projects are recognized as the building blocks of strategy. Outputs, outcomes, benefits and related concepts have been put forward by the program management community to bridge the gap between strategy and projects. Yet, firstly there appears to be some discordance among authors on the exact nature of these concepts. Secondly, these frameworks may not yet fully reflect the specific nature of strategy implementation. Therefore it is hard to accept them as the basis for communication between the project/program organisation and the business management when managing strategy implementation through programs of projects. We will borrow three concepts (resources, competencies and capabilities) from the resource based view of the company (RBV). We shall use them to define three levels of program objectives. We will illustrate these levels through a case of a strategic program in a professional information services company. We conclude with implications on current program management practice and research. Keywords: program management, program objectives, strategy implementation, benefits management

This article describes the major barriers across the design-manufacturing interface and examines ways to overcome them to achieve a smooth production start-up. An integration model reveals that formalization facilitates a smooth production start-up. Independent of the degree of formalization during the early development stages, a formal approach is preferred when the new product is introduced into production. Another facilitating factor is the empathy from design towards manufacturing, which can be stimulated by managerial actions. Although the complexity and newness of product and technology hinder a smooth production start-up, their effect seems to vanish by introducing formalization and by striving for a design team that has empathy towards manufacturing.

Electricity markets are increasingly integrated across borders, but transmission and renewable energy policies often remain local and uncoordinated. In this paper, we analyze how cooperative behavior in developing renewable energy technologies across borders and/or cross-border transmission capacity investment can reduce the cost of achieving a renewable energy target. We use a three step equilibrium model with: i) transmission investment, ii) generation investment and iii) electricity market that we apply to an interconnected two zone system. We find that it pays to cooperate if the zones have different renewable energy sources, but the success of a renewable energy cooperation also depends on cooperation in transmission development, which is therefore an important interaction to take into account in renewable energy policy discussions.