R&D project selection: which criteria should we use?

Abstract

Many companies around the world lay on R&D their chances to be profitable and still standing in a dynamic market. Tokeep the changes going, many ideas surge and some are transformed into projects. Since the resources are limited, organizations are obliged to select only the most suitable projects to attend their objectives. This is an old practice. However, project portfolio characteristics has changed. The portfolio objectives of today go beyond profit: strategy, environment and society has also become import, along with manyother decision criteria. The computational power was also enhanced, making multidata decision approaches feasible, even forsmall-profitable organizations. On the last half century, many author shave proposed multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods for project portfolio selection (PPS) on Research and Development (R&D). However, only a few gave importance to the criteria used, which would be a central issue on any multicriteria decision. Thus, in order to contribute to R&D PPS field of study, this thesis investigates two propositions: (1) most criteria used in R&D PPS may be represented by a smaller list of criteria, and (2) the criteria used in R&D PPS can be selected in a fuzzy environment, according to their influence and importance. To do so, we explore the 227 criteria used in R&D PPS from 1970 to 2019, summarizing them in a list of 23 criteria with broader scopes and 8 criteria groups. We have also performed a Systematic Literature Review to get to the initial 227 criteria and to lighten the research opportunities in MCDM-based R&D PPS explored by this thesis. We also propose a novel MCDM approach for criteria selection, that integrates Fuzzy-based DEMATEL and Fuzzy-AHP Extend Analysis methods. Experts from a representative electrical-public Brazilian R&D organization have built and validated bothlist and method. Experts from other representative public Brazilian R&D organizations have also contributed in other research steps. All involved organizations manage together R&D portfolios valued around US$ 5 billion each year, which account for 38% of all Brazilian annually expenditures in R&D projects. In a overall manner, the results provide guidance on the topic and facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation concerning the criteria selectionprocessinMCDM-basedR&D PPS.