Project Portfolio Management in the Front-End of Innovation of Research Centers: a Literature Review

The beginning of an innovation process, also known as “front-end of innovation” (FEI), counts as an essential contributor to the successful development of new products and for their market appeal. Nevertheless, while helpful procedures and techniques for developing new products are well-known and widely applied, FEI is still an understudied area, and models for managing it are not yet commonly used in technology-oriented companies. FEI, also known as "fuzzy front end", can even be "fuzzier" in not-for-profit research centers. That is because the focus of these centers is advancing of scientific knowledge, rather than commercializing the results of those activities. This study summarizes the insights from a literature review on the topic of “project portfolio management” (PPM) in relation to innovation and, more specifically, with FEI and its components of ideation, innovation management, innovation strategy, foresight, and incremental or radical innovation. The authors selected and reviewed content from 170 papers published in SCOPUS prior to February 2019. The discussion uses a theoretical framework called "Front-End of Innovation Integrative Ontology (FEI2O)" to assist in framing the discussion.