Project Portfolio Management Practices for Innovation – A Case Study at ABN AMRO - Brazil

Abstract: Project Portfolio Management is a tool for effective resource allocation, for the selection of those projects with the highest potential to become tomorrow’s new product and service winners. The accurate implementation of project portfolio methodology is ultimately linked to sound innovation management practices. This paper aims to research a financial firm, ABN AMRO – Brazil, to uncover its project portfolio management practices and their role in fostering innovation. This study set out to define how project portfolio management methodology at the organization ultimately contributes to innovation, and to highlight some of the difficulties and challenges in picking the right projects. Thus, the focus of this paper is to understand how project portfolio management aids ABN AMRO Bank – Brazil in making strategic choices that will ultimately lead to innovation. A total of 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers at the institution in order to assess the project portfolio management practices and their focus on innovation. The results indicate an organizational shift from a lack of formal project selection to the implementation of a sound project portfolio methodology that aims at selecting those projects aligned with business strategy. The results also indicated that innovation has a significant role in the process, by functioning as criteria in the recently defined explicit method for portfolio management.