Taking stock of project value creation: A structured literature review with future directions for research and practice

• We have reviewed and analyzed the project value creation literature.
• Project value creation builds extensively on benefit management and strategic management literature.
• The literature dates back to the 1980s but the most development has been in since the year 2000.
• Value creation serves the outcome dimension of project success, similar to benefits, impact and worth.
• We present four directions for future research and highlight three implications for practice.

This paper aims to take stock of what we know about project value creation and to present future directions for research and practice. We performed an explorative and unstructured literature review, which was subsequently paired with a structured literature review. We join several research areas by adopting the project value creation perspective on literature relating to benefits, value, performance, and success in projects. Our review includes 111 contributions analyzed through both an inductive and deductive approach. We find that relevant literature dates back to the early 1980s, and the still developing value-centric view has been the subject of many publications in recent years. We contribute to research on project value creation through four directions for future research: rejuvenating value management through combining value, benefits, and costs; supplementing value creation with value capture; applying a holistic approach to project, portfolio, and strategic management; and theorizing by applying independent models and frameworks.