Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg The Question of Efficiency This article addresses the last of the four critical questions for strategic portfolio decisions (see below), efficiency. The prior three questions — sufficiency, significance and renewal — are fundamentally questions of effectiveness, which must always proceed the question of efficiency. “There is nothing so useless

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg August’s ValuePoint introduced the Four Critical Questions for Decision Making in Strategic Portfolio Management (see below), and September’s edition examined the Sufficiency and Significance questions. In this edition, we’ll look at Renewal. All businesses die. Every business is slowly sliding into lower value, towards commoditization or obsolescence. Every one,

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg August’s ValuePoint introduced the Four Critical Questions for Decision Making in Strategic Portfolio Management (see sidebar). In this edition, we’ll look at two questions about Sufficiency and Significance. Sufficiency The Sufficiency question asks, “Do we have enough to achieve our goals?” In particular, is there enough potential in the

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg Strategic portfolio management can give your company leverage to meet its growth goals and renew its products and services to avoid obsolescence and commoditization. The process doesn’t have to be complex and bogged down in details. There are simple, powerful tools you can use to create great results. Complexity

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg At its core, Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) is comparing competing proposals for selection so a company can drive the most growth from its investments. But this means some proposals get left behind. The hardest part of SPM is saying “no” and making it stick. Saying “no” to a project

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg During our May 15 webinar, “Opportunity Costs and The Cost of Opportunities”, the audience asked Shawn Williams, VP of R&D at Rogers Corporation, Udi Chatow, Business Management at Applied Materials, and I questions on how to leverage opportunity costs to drive the upside value of innovation projects and portfolios.

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg In the February 2018 edition of ValuePoint, I discussed opportunity cost in your innovation portfolio. Because of scarcity of resources, it’s rare that an organization can vigorously pursue all of the innovation opportunities it comes up with. But organizational FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) can make it difficult for

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg SmartOrg recently hosted a webinar with Temperince Morgan, Executive Director of the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, on making rigorous portfolio decisions in a mission-driven organization. The Nature Conservancy implemented a new discipline for managing its portfolios of conservation projects with SmartOrg’s help. As a result, The Conservancy’s

Download PDF By David Matheson, SmartOrg One of the biggest factors in valuation of an innovation portfolio is opportunity cost. Unless you have sufficient management bandwidth, technical capability, time, and money to execute every idea in your innovation portfolio, you will only be able to fully pursue some of the projects. The remaining projects will