Innovation portfolio management: An understudied driver of innovation success?

Innovation portfolio management is increasingly regarded as an important driver of a firm's innovation performance. While the new product development process refers to managing innovation projects right, innovation portfolio management addresses the issue of managing the right innovation projects. These portfolio-level activities may be complementary to the well-known new product development process, and this complementary nature suggests that innovation portfolio management may be an understudied driver of innovation success. In this introductory paper, we address critical characteristics of innovation portfolio management, provide an overview of the contributions to this special issue, and discuss opportunities for further research. Copyright © 2009, Inderscience Publishers.