Management Tools for RetD Project Portfolios in Complex Organizations – the case of an international pharmaceutical firm

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is a growing issue in both professional and academic circles. The typology of Cooper et al. (1998) has pictured the variety of PPM formalized approaches into four types (financial, strategic, scoring and “bubble diagram”). While the use of formalized methods by top performers is clearly attested, the choice of a specific approach and the precise benefits and limits of different instruments are still in debate. The present paper formalizes more precise contingency hypotheses between PPM practices and organizational variables such as R&D strategy, the structure and history of a firm's development, partnership policy and learning track in the project domain. Where managerial implications are concerned, the paper puts forward an analytical framework for the adjustment of portfolio instruments to fit specific situations and develops the conclusions of that framework for an international pharmaceutical group, Merck Lipha. The research underlying this paper adopts an interactive and experimental case-based methodology which has been on-going since 1997.