R&D project portfolio selection with multiple stakeholders

• Main Author: LIAN, Wenqi
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Project selection; R&D management; Multiple stakeholders; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/299; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1299&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Research and Development (R&D) is time consuming, expensive and risky; yet product life cycles are shortening and competition is fierce. Therefore, R&D often requires the collaboration and input of multiple stakeholders. This dissertation studies how collaborations involving multiple stakeholders can effectively make R&D project portfolio selection decisions to create the optimal social welfare. The two essays in the dissertation build stylized analytical models to examine R&D project portfolio selection in two different settings, academia and industry respectively. The models explicitly acknowledge the different information, goals and operational decisions of the stakeholders. In the first essay, we study a two-stage funding process for university research project selection, with bridge funding by the university first followed by government funding after. We consider different project selection mechanisms by the university corresponding to different strategic missions. We focus on the impact of the university-level selection on government funding and project success and provide recommendations for university funding in terms of policies, objectives and coverage. In the second essay, we look at strategic R&D alliances between two profit-maximizing firms. Specifically, we study how the payment structure and the contract timing affects the project selection decisions of the stakeholders in a strategic alliance, in the presence of an R&D budget constraint, market interactions, and varying levels of bargaining power. We provide recommendations for the effective formation of strategic alliances.