Previous research recognises the strategic role of vanguard projects in providing their initiators with avenues for entering new markets or gaining mastery over innovative technologies. This study makes a contribution to this research by focusing on the extent to which vanguard projects are under control and serve the interests of their principal initiators and the other actors involved. Simultaneously, the present study contributes to project management research by applying historical case study methodology on Eurocan, a vanguard project that a major Finnish forest industry firm Enso established in the mid-1960s to the wilderness of British Columbia, Canada. Our historical analysis encourages regarding vanguard projects as relay races in which several actors participate, largely in unanticipated ways. This is especially because the initiation of vanguard projects appears to be characterised by both the heterogeneity of the actors involved, a wide variety of actions taken by these actors to increase their centrality in the project organisation as well as abrupt changes among them and their relative importance over the project lifecycle. Together these characteristics make vanguard projects particularly prone to influence from external actors and events.

先前的研究认识到先锋项目在为其发起人提供进入新市场或掌握创新技术的途径方面的战略作用。本研究通过关注先锋项目在多大程度上受到控制并为其主要发起人和其他参与者的利益服务，从而对本研究做出了贡献。同时，本研究通过对 Eurocan 应用历史案例研究方法为项目管理研究做出贡献，Eurocan 是芬兰一家主要森林工业公司 Enso 于 1960 年代中期在加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省荒野建立的先锋项目。我们的历史分析鼓励将先锋项目视为多个参与者参与的接力赛，主要以意想不到的方式参与。这尤其是因为先锋项目的启动似乎具有以下特点：所涉及的参与者的异质性、这些参与者为提高其在项目组织中的中心地位而采取的各种行动以及它们之间的突然变化及其相对重要性在项目生命周期中。这些特点共同使先锋项目特别容易受到外部参与者和事件的影响。