New Product Portfolio Management: Practices and Performance

Effective portfolio management is vital to successful product innovation. Portfolio management is about making strategic choices—which markets, products, and technologies our business will invest in. It is about resource allocation—how you will spend your scarce engineering, R&D, and marketing resources. It focuses on project selection—on which new product or development projects you choose from the many opportunities you face. And it deals with balance—having the right balance between numbers of projects you do and the resources or capabilities you have available. In this article, the authors reveal the findings of their extensive study of portfolio management in industry. This study, the first of its kind, reports the portfolio management practices and performance of 205 U.S. companies. Its overall objective was to gain insights into what portfolio methods companies use, whether they are satisfied with them, the performance results they achieve with the different approaches, and suggestions for others who are considering implementing portfolio management. The research first assesses management's satisfaction with portfolio methods they employ and notes that some firms face major problems in portfolio management. Next, businesses are grouped or clustered into four groups according to management's view of portfolio management: Cowboys, Crossroads, Duds, and Benchmark businesses. The research first assesses management's satisfaction with portfolio methods they employ and notes that some firms face major problems in portfolio management. Next, businesses are grouped or clustered into four groups according to management's view of portfolio management: Cowboys, Crossroads, Duds, and Benchmark businesses. Various performance metrics are used to gauge the performance of the business's portfolio. The results reveal major differences between the best and the worst. Benchmark businesses are the top performers. Their new product portfolios consistently score the best in terms of performance—high-value projects, aligned with the business's strategy, the right balance of projects, and the right number of projects. The authors take a closer look at these benchmark businesses to determine what distinguishes their projects from the rest. Benchmark businesses employ a much more formal, explicit method to managing their portfolio of projects. They rely on clear, well-defined portfolio procedures, they consistently apply their portfolio method to all projects, and management buys into the approach. The relative popularity of various portfolio methods—from financial methods to strategic approaches, bubble diagrams, and scoring approaches—are investigated. Not surprisingly, financial approaches are the most popular and dominate the portfolio decision. But what is surprising is the dubious results achieved via financial approaches. Again, benchmark businesses stand out from the rest: they place less emphasis on financial approaches and more on strategic methods, and they tend to use multiple methods more so than the rest. Strategic methods, along with scoring approaches, yield the best portfolios; financial methods yield poorer portfolio results. The authors provide a number of recommendations and suggestions for anyone setting out to implement portfolio management in their business.     

Searching for farmland preservation markets: Evidence from the Southeastern U.S.

Farmland preservation is a topic of much discussion in many areas of the United States, but of little action. Only 1.6 million acres of U.S. farmland are permanently protected nationwide, a number not too different from some estimates of annual losses of farmland to development. While a number of studies have estimated the non-market benefits of preserved farmland (cf. Wichelns, D., Kline, J.D., 1993. The impact of parcel characteristics on the cost of development rights. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 22 (October) 150–158), this study is the first to focus on the potential for a market for farmland preservation. Using primary data collected from farmers and citizens specifically to address this issue, we estimate the supply of and demand for farmland for preservation. Separate models are estimated for both privately and publicly run preservation programs. Demand is estimated under private-voluntary, public-voluntary, and public-mandatory scenarios. The results show that both public and private programs can be successful. The market capable of preserving the most acres is a tax-funded, state-run program which could permanently preserve over 200,000 acres in 5 years.     

Preparing undergraduate students for the Major Field Test in Business

Many business programs address the learning of undergraduate students with an exit exam. A reference librarian and the business school faculty created an online test preparation study guide (or LibGuide) which included no-cost resources that were readily available yet academically authoritative to aid students in studying for the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test in Business at an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business–accredited college in northwest Georgia. The findings indicated that while some graduating business seniors did use the LibGuide materials, many were overwhelmed with the amount of material available and believed studying would not be beneficial to their performance on the exit exam. Discussion and areas for future research are presented.     

从NAFTA到TPP（上）--纪念北美自由贸易协定签订20周年

1993年12月,克林顿总统正式签署了北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）的实施法案。由于贸易和投资会受到各种经济变量的影响,因此,目前要对20年来北美自由贸易协定的影响做一整体评估还有难度,但有一点是可以肯定的,即北美自由贸易协定有力地推动了北美地区和整个世界的贸易自由化进程。北美自由贸易协定是最全面的自由贸易协定,提出了一些具有历史意义的条款,成为美国新一代自由贸易协定的模板或范例,并且为乌拉圭回合的多边贸易谈判提供了理论和经验基础。在美国与其他11个国家（包括加拿大和墨西哥）关于跨太平洋伙伴关系协定（TPP）的谈判中,与北美自由贸易协定相关的政策问题仍是美国政府关注的焦点。到目前为止,反对者所担心的情况没有发生,支持者所预言的巨大的经济利益也没有出现,北美自由贸易协议对美国经济的实际影响似乎并不太大。一方面是因为美国与加拿大和墨西哥的进出口贸易占美国国内生产总值的比重较小;另一方面是因为当这三个国家真正实行了更加开放的贸易和投资时,三国之间的企业也随之产生了成本调节机制。     

Toward a method for the rapid collection of public concerns and benefits of emerging energy technologies

Abstract

The speed and scale with which new technologies emerge sometimes force decision makers to act without the benefit of thorough risk analyses and environmental and social impact analyses. Insights from interested and affected parties (IAPs) can be tapped to alert decision makers to expected risks and benefits associated with emerging technologies. One of the methodological challenges has been to identify IAPs with relevant knowledge of the emerging technology. Here we show how Facebook’s marketing tool can be employed to reach IAPs with experience and knowledge in a new energy technology and recruit them to a survey instrument. We demonstrate the approach in the context of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in the United States. A $200 1-week Facebook ad produced a diverse sample of 379 IAPs from 36 states that identified 41 benefits and 80 risks. This knowledge can be used to steer the direction of analyses for impact assessments. Comparison to a similar study showed a surprising number of differences, suggesting that larger samples are needed.     

Are you for real? An evaluation of the relationship between emotional labour and visitor outcomes

Emotional labour is the management of emotional display to satisfy organisational expectations and can be performed by faking emotions (surface acting) or by managing felt emotion to be ‘authentic’ (deep acting). Despite an assumed positive relationship between deep acting and a range of organisationally-desired visitor outcomes, no previous research has examined the relationship between the types of acting and those outcomes. The present study assessed this relationship in contrast to the effectiveness of surface acting. Drawing upon a sample of 688 visitors and 66 guided tours, the results of hierarchical linear modelling found no statistically significant relationship between guide-reported acting and visitor perceptions of acting. Visitor perceptions of deep and surface acting were related to visitor outcomes in the expected direction. Implications of the findings suggest tourism organisations should focus on managing perceptions of emotional authenticity to enhance visitor outcomes.     

Benchmarking the Firm's Critical Success Factors in New Product Development

Managing new product development (NPD) is, to a great extent, a process of separating the winners from the losers. At the project level, tough go/no-go decisions must be made throughout each development effort to ensure that resources are being allocated appropriately. At the company level, benchmarking is helpful for identifying the critical success factors that set the most successful firms apart from their competitors. This company- or macro-level analysis also has the potential for uncovering success factors that are not readily apparent through examination of specific projects. To improve our understanding of the company-level drivers of NPD success, Robert Cooper and Elko Kleinschmidt describe the results of a multi-firm benchmarking study. They propose that a company's overall new product performance depends on the following elements: the NPD process and the specific activities within this process; the organization of the NPD program; the firm's NPD strategy; the firm's culture and climate for innovation; and senior management commitment to NPD. Given the multidimensional nature of NPD performance, the study involves 10 performance measures of a company's new product program: success rate, percent of sales, profitability relative to spending, technical success rating, sales impact, profit impact, success in meeting sales objectives, success in meeting profit objectives, profitability relative to competitors, and overall success. The 10 performance metrics are reduced to two underlying dimensions: program profitability and program impact. These performance factors become theX-and Y-ax.es of a performance map, a visual summary of the relative performance of the 135 companies responding to the survey. The performance map further breaks down the respondents into four groups: solid performers, high-impact technical winners, low-impact performers, and dogs. Again, the objective of this analysis is to determine what separates the solid performers from the companies in the other groups. The analysis identifies nine constructs that drive performance. In rank order of their impact on performance, the main performance drivers that separate the solid performers from the dogs are: a high-quality new product process; a clear, well-communicated new product strategy for the company; adequate resources for new products; senior management commitment to new products; an entrepreneurial climate for product innovation; senior management accountability; strategic focus and synergy (i.e., new products close to the firm's existing markets and leveraging existing technologies); high-quality development teams; and cross-functional teams.