Integration of product and technology development process with R&D portfolio management using efficient frontier analysis

In times of good economy as well as poor, research and development organizations are called upon to propose new innovations and justify their programme spending. This proposal and justification process in many cases requires that the researcher insure alignment with strategic business needs and direction of the company. It most often takes the form of a detailed financial analysis that demonstrates the current and future value of the program deliverables. This paper outlines a method for converging two processes, strategic product development and technology planning, thus making a more efficient and robust tool for R&D portfolio management. The framework developed in this work provides the ability to use known and practiced financial assessment tools applied to a streamlined product-technology planning process. We introduce the topic and provide the practical motivation for our work. We then discuss the background for the use of the efficient frontier within the context of an R&D portfolio. We outline the complete framework, we review the required framework processes and components and provide a sample of how the framework operates. We discuss limitations of the framework and we conclude with several ideas for future work on the subject.