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Decision makers find creating an innovation portfolio challenging, because more innovative projects are associated with a higher degree of uncertainty. In this study, we investigate the potential benefits of applying real options reasoning (ROR) in innovation portfolio management from an attention‐based view. Using a sample of 137 innovation portfolios with multiple informants, we investigate ROR's influence on portfolio innovativeness and, ultimately, on portfolio success in a mediated model. Further, we analyze the moderating influence of an innovation portfolio's organizational context — entrepreneurial orientation and innovation climate — on ROR's application. The results support ROR's positive relationship to portfolio innovativeness and portfolio success. The analysis also supports the positive interaction between entrepreneurial orientation and ROR with respect to portfolio innovativeness. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the relationship between ROR and portfolio success, mediated by portfolio innovativeness. In addition, the study's analysis offers an explanation of previously mixed findings regarding ROR's benefits by considering the firm's strategic and cultural innovation contexts. The findings underline the relevance of strategic support for ROR's effectiveness in innovation portfolio management. Furthermore, the findings encourage managers to implement ROR, but also stress the essential contribution an entrepreneurial orientation makes when the managers do so.

Seit über 15 Jahren untersucht das Forschungsteam MPM im Rahmen der MPM-Benchmarking-Studien Erfolgsfaktoren und Best Practices im Multiprojektmanagement (MPM). Fokus der 9. MPM-Studie 2020 mit über 120 Unternehmen war die Fragestellung, wie Unternehmen ihr Projektportfolio effektiv an Veränderungen anpassen und langfristig erfolgreich ausrichten können. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Triple-A PPM – die integrierte Verbindung agiler, adaptiver und ambidexterer Fähigkeiten – auf strategischer, kultureller und prozessualer Ebene eine nachhaltig erfolgreiche Ausrichtung ermöglicht. Dies beinhaltet eine regelmäßige Strategieüberprüfung, Mitarbeiterstärkung und effiziente Entscheidungsprozesse – organisationale Kompetenzen, die durch Promotoren gefördert werden. Klassische Erfolgsfaktoren, wie die Einzelprojektreife, Strategieklarheit und Prozessformalisierung, bleiben weiterhin wichtig und bilden die Basis für ein erfolgreiches Portfolio.

A major challenge for organizations’ strategic management is to cope with uncertainty and constantly adapt to a turbulent environment. In organizations, project portfolios constitute the responsible entities to operationalize the adaptation by developing new opportunities and ensuring the implementation of an adapted organizational strategy. Thus, in this dissertation, I investigate how project portfolio and project management can strategically and operationally cope with uncertainty, increase portfolio and project success, and thereby support an organization’s successful adaptation. In regards to the strategic decision-making of portfolio management, I empirically reveal that decision-makers can effectively cope with projects’ and environment’s uncertainty through real options reasoning and thereby increase portfolio innovativeness and success. Furthermore, I show that portfolios consisting of agile projects benefit the valuable recognition of emergent strategies. In addition, I highlight the important role of entrepreneurial orientation and innovation climate as antecedents and moderators of portfolio management decisions. In regards to the operational implementation of a portfolio’s strategy, I investigate how portfolio and project managers can cope with projects’ uncertainty in their operational decisions. I show that project management effort causally increases projects’ profitability and that the marginal impact of project management effort increases for higher project complexity. Furthermore, I show that project managers’ reporting behavior is significantly associated with projects’ future performance. This dissertation contributes new insights on portfolio and project management in general and portfolio management’s strategic and operational decision-making under uncertainty in particular. Furthermore, it adds new aspects to the interaction between portfolio and project management and thereby opens up new perspectives on behavioral and contextual decision-ma