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Gernot Grabher traces project ecologies in London’s Soho; six-layer architecture, six limitations identified Seeing Like an Ecology: Project Ecologies as Prism, Practice, and Provocation1 Seeing Like an Ecology: Project Ecologies as Prism, Practice, and Provocation1 Gernot Grabher1 Abstract This article traces the genealogy, architecture, and afterlife of the concept of project ecologies. Originating from an extended immersion into London’s Soho advertising industry, the concept proposed a six-layer architecture—team, firm, epistemic collective, personal network, locality, and institution—to capture how temporary projects are embed- ded in, and recursively reshape, more durable relational configurations. The article reconstructs the intellectual trib- utaries that fed the concept (heterarchy, temporary organizing, the knowledge economy, the new spirit of capitalism); maps its subsequent diffusion across creative industries, megaprojects, urban development, and infrastructure delivery; and tracks how recent scholarship has advanced—and complicated—its constitutive dimensions along what are here termed the 4 + 2 Ts: time, task, team, transition plus territory and things. In a concluding act of retrospective candor, six limitations—typological drift, empirical reach, boundary delineation, power asymmetries, normative undertone, and conceptual overlaps—are diagnosed and paired with concrete research directions that aspire to convert a capacious but underdetermined trading zone into a proper research program. Keywords project ecology, project management, temporary organizations, governance, heterarchy From Soho, With Bewilderment The idea arose neither from a conceptual epiphany nor from an exercise in methodical deduction: the notion of the project ecology, rather haltingly, began to take shape during an extended immersion into the world of advertis- ing in Soho (London). Part expedition (through largely uncharted terrain, back then) and part safari (with encoun- ters of exotic organizational creatures), this quest sought answers to one question: How had Soho transformed itself from a subordinate outpost of Madison Avenue’s utilitar- ian “first wave” into a global creative hot spot pioneering the self-reflective “second wave” of advertising? (Grabher, 2001a, p. 351). Although most conspicuously celebrated and legiti- mized by a surge of Cannes-Lions decorated advertising campaigns, Soho’s creativity was by no means limited to the realm of its tangible output. Already a center of gravity of Swinging London’s creative industries2, this tiny dis- trict (of roughly a square mile) also catalyzed a radical transformation of the production process: breaking away from the ritualized antagonism between the hearts and the suits, between the creatives (embodying an artistic ethos) and the account managers (honoring a business ethos), Soho agencies pioneered the professionalization of account planning (introducing, in fact, a scientific ethos into creative production) (Grabher, 2001a, p. 352).3 The ad village, as it was colloquially referred to, moreover afforded a fertile breeding ground for bold experiments (that is the safari part) with corporate governance. The per- sistent inception of mavericks like the employee-owned Agency of the Year in 1997, St. Lukes, time and again, enriched the genetic pool for further organizational and governance mutations (see also Grabher & Stark, 1997, p. 536). By venturing ever deeper into the variegated life world of Soho advertising, the early fascination with this daz- zling empirical reality increasingly began to intermingle with a sense of conceptual unease, not to say bewilder- ment. At least viewed from a far-off university desk, the 1HafenCity University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Corresponding Author: Gernot Grabher, Urban and Regional Economics, HafenCity University Hamburg, Henning-Voscherau-Platz 1, 20457 Hamburg, Germany. Email: gernot.grabher@hcu-hamburg.de Thoughtlet Project Management Journal 1–19 © 2026 Project Management Institute, Inc. Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/87569728261452960 journals.sagepub.com/home/pmx ...