ABSTRACT
In the 1950s and 1960s, research and development (R&D) efforts adopted the basic procedures of project management. In the 1970s and 1980s efforts were becoming more effectively aligned with company's business objectives and strategies – that is, they became market-driven. In addition, from the 1990s a multitude of technological consortia, consisting of users and suppliers, have increased demand-driven innovation, employing the maturing concepts of portfolio management to reduce investment risk. Innovation and R&D managers are constantly challenged to ensure that R&D budgets are allocated to the optimum set of R&D projects to reach their innovation targets in both the shorter and the longer term. This presents many challenges – not least of which is that, in R&D environments, traditional factors such as business opportunity and the feasibility of a project do not necessarily predict project success. Risks in R&D can come from several sources, which could be technical, financial, market related and administrative.
