Journal of Operations Management 29 (2011) 462–476 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Operations Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jom The development and application of a process model for R&D project management in a high tech firm: A field study Devesh Verma a,1 , Anant Mishra b,2 , Kingshuk K. Sinha c,∗ a Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., Two Hilton Court, Parsippany, NJ 07054, United States b Information Systems and Operations Management Department, School of Management, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, United States c Operations and Management Science Department, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States article info Article history: Available online 26 November 2010 Keywords: Project management Process model Portfolio management Product development High tech firm Field study abstract In R&D organizations of high tech firms, multiple R&D projects are executed concurrently and timeliness of project completion – i.e., developing the right products at the right times – is a matter of serious concern. Given that the priority of R&D projects and the interdependencies between the projects in a high tech firm change dynamically, high tech R&D project management is a complex and challenging endeavor. To improve the understanding and management of high tech R&D projects, this paper reports the findings of a field study where we, first, develop and empirically estimate a model that relates project priority over time with the generative mechanisms of market pull and technical challenge associated with R&D projects. Next, we develop and demonstrate the application of a process model within which the time-varying project priority model is embedded. The process model makes it possible to allocate fixed resources among competing projects with time-varying interdependencies, thereby improving the timeliness of project completion. This research was conducted in collaboration with a major U.S. high tech firm. The corporate R&D center of the firm served as the research setting for the field study. We present an application of the process model to delineate the evolution of the R&D organization with the merger of its (technology driven) parent firm with another (market driven) high tech manufacturing firm. The application of the process model generates theoretical insights that are used to develop testable propositions. Implications of the study findings and directions for future research are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction “A substantial body of research [on project portfolio management]... has been focused on the question of which innovation projects to pursue.... The optimization paradigm so prominent... has been brought to bear on product planning problems over the decades. Surveys have shown that these models have found very little use in practice and only two of the articles published are empirical.... If 50 years of research in an area has generated very little managerial impact, perhaps it is time for new approaches (emphasis added)” (Shane and Ulrich, 2004, p. 136). High tech firms compete in a dynamically changing market place where, to survive and thrive, firms need to introduce a contin- uous stream of successful new products. A conventional way of addressing this need would be to reduce the development time of ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 612 624 7058. E-mail addresses: deverma@dsi.com (D. Verma), anantmishra@gmail.com (A. Mishra), ksinha@umn.edu (K.K. Sinha). 1 Tel.: +1 973 944 2169. 2 Tel.: +1 763 218 6783. products (Adler et al., 1995). But simply reducing product devel- opment time as an efficiency exercise alone – rather than basing it on strategic considerations – would lead to the development of products without customers (Stalk and Webber, 1993; Gerwin and Barrowman, 2002). Therefore, without belittling the impor- tance of reducing product development time, the focus of this study is on timeliness – i.e., developing the right products at the right times. The challenge of introducing new products in a timely manner is often complicated by the propensity of high tech firms to reduce market risks by concurrently executing multiple R&D projects that share human and capital resources (Adler et al., 1995; Krishnan and Ulrich, 2001; Nobeoka and Cusumano, 1997; Girotra et al., 2007). As a result, pooled interdependencies arise between such projects (Thompson, 1967; Verma and Sinha, 2002). Each project renders a discrete contribution to the entire pool of concurrent projects; each project is, in turn, supported by this entire pool, making every project interdependent (Loch and Kavadias, 2002). Therefore, if a product is developed when the market is not ready for it, it is conceivable that the resources committed toward development of the product could have been better utilized for other concurrent projects that had greater market potential (Meredith and Mantel, 2003). 0272-6963/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jom.2010.11.010