Companies today are aggressively finding ways to improve top-line growth by introducing innovative products faster to the market. To achieve both innovation and accelerated rollout, many are turning to techniques such as Stage Gate approaches to improve engineering and marketing collaborations to clarify short term resource allocations (day to day plan with employee assignment). While Stage Gate approaches have been shown to result in better project coordination and faster time to market by doing projects right, research also indicates the need to ensure alignment to company strategy by doing the right projects within the allocated annual budget through medium term (rough cut capacity plan with employee requirements) and long term resource allocations (business / strategic plan with funding requirements). Today, such medium to long term resource allocation methodologies tend to be broadly consolidated under Research and Development (R&D) product portfolio management. We argue that there is value in a philosophical change in viewing R&D product portfolio management from the context of (1.) long and medium term resource allocation phases separately, (2.) focusing on the overlapping regions between long and medium term and between medium and short term resource allocation phases and (3.) the evolving resource allocation perspective (monetary to headcount to skillset) through these phases. Cooper et al note that for R&D product portfolio management and the Stage Gate process to work together, one can expect one of two scenarios - a gates dominated approach (where the prioritization and resource decisions are made at short term focused Stage Gates) or a portfolio reviews dominated approach (where the prioritization and resource decisions are made at the long term focused portfolio reviews). We propose that with appropriate focus given to the medium term phase, a third approach that we call a Hybrid Gates approach can exist in a "gates dominated" environment. A case study on Freescale Semiconductor was used as an empirical inquiry to gain deeper understanding on the perceived value of this approach within a real-life context. Triangulating between structured surveys, unstructured surveys, and focused interviews; we were able to show perceived value to the organization in the following areas: (1.) Enhancing the understanding of decision maker's decision and solution spaces, (2.) Clarifying strategic expressions and "stress testing" new strategies, (3.) Improving horizontal and vertical communication within the organization and (4.) Aiding in objectivity in R&D investment allocation. Furthermore, we were able to conceptually show how this approach retains the advantages of the gates dominated and portfolio dominated approaches while minimizing their respective weaknesses. This research is novel and unique as we have not found any research literature that focuses on a Hybrid Gates approach perspective or studies where the implementation of MO-ZOLP is: (1.) this large in scale and (2.) designed specifically to support a Stage Gate dominated environment. We believe that this research contributes to the practising educator and researcher by providing them with an alternative approach on R&D project portfolio management in complex organizations that are using a Stage Gate process. We also believe that this research is valuable to the practitioner by providing them with a practical process and methodology in which change management for such activities can be achieved. In addition, we assessed the on-going value added to the organization, thus linking theory to practice and finally, to outcome.

The content of this thesis is to analyze the product portfolio of the company ECS Invention spol. s r. o. and a proposal for its innovation. Recommendations related to the product portfolio are included as well. The thesis is divided into two parts. The theoreticalpart is focused on theoretical and methodological background of strategic marketing and innovations. The practical part deals with application of the theoretical knowledge into practice.

The diploma thesis focuses on the preparation of a marketing plan for a civic association that offers products and services for both professional and amateur cyclists. The thesis is divided into two main parts, a theoretic one and a practical one. The theoretic part describes the general view at the strategic marketing and the marketing plan; the practical part describes the concrete application of the above stated marketing approaches. The outcome of the thesis is the plan that comes directly out from the mission and strategic goal of the association. In practical part of the thesis, I am analysing the market of domestic travels, I am focusing on the segmentation of target group later on. The current status of the association is analysed and described in terms of product portfolio and strategic approaches. I am offering a new structure of the portfolio for which the marketing plan is being prepared. The action plan with all communication activities is part of the final outcome as well.

In this work, we introduce the evolution of thinking in the field of corporate governance. We are focusing on process management and current possibilities information support business processes. We'll show you an overview of performance measurement tools and process efficiency. An important part of this work is dedicated to design its own discount site that allows its customers to bulk purchases of various goods and services at a bargain price. For this site was created by an instrument to promote corporate portfolio. The tool is designed to automatically monitor and analyze sales success in competition and thus promote the award of contracts and specific form of a sale on your own server. The end of work is devote to practical use of the discount site in the real environment and evaluation of results.

Bakgrund och problem: Läkemedelsbranschen är en bransch som präglas av såväl höga framtagningskostnader som en påtagligt lång utvecklingsfas av läkemedel. Branschen står vidare inför en rad krav och regleringar från myndigheter som bland annat ger upphov till ett komplext prissättningssystem. Tidigare forskning visar att kostnader ofta utgör en central del i prissättningen och att olika prissättningsstrategier bör användas över produktens livscykel. Studier visar även hur en produktportfölj bör sättas samman och hur prissättningen bör tas i beaktning. Gemensamt för dessa är dock att de inte har studerat företag som har höga kostnader för forskning och utveckling och som står inför en rad myndighetsregleringar samt hur det som studerats förhåller sig till strategi, vilket således motiverar denna studie. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att analysera vilka prissättningsstrategier forskande läkemedelsbolag använder vid prissättning av läkemedel utifrån ett strategiskt perspektiv där företagets produktportfölj och produkternas livscykel tas i beaktning. Studien ämnar att bidra med såväl praktisk som teoretisk kunskap genom att studiens resultat dels kan fungera som en modell som illustrerar hur interna och externa faktorer påverkar varandra och inverkar på strategiska val i läkemedelsbolags prissättningsprocess, dels genom att kunskapen om prissättning av läkemedel breddas. Metod: Studien är en kvalitativ intervjustudie som baseras på empiriskt material som insamlats genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med respondenter från sju läkemedelsföretag. Slutsats: Studien visar att det föreligger ett samband mellan läkemedelsföretags strategi, portföljval, prissättning och produktlivscykel. De genomgående största faktorerna bakom läkemedelsföretagens resonemang för vilket pris som sätts på läkemedel beror på läkemedelstypen, konkurrenssituationen på marknaden, läkemedlets kostnadseffektivitet och samhällets betalningsvilja. Vidare har det svenska systemet för prissättning av läkemedel en avgörande betydelse för både hur företagen resonerar och för vilka prissättningsstrategier som används. Vilken prissättningsstrategi som tillämpas beror på vilken typ av läkemedel som avses. För generiska läkemedel anammar företagen genomgående en konkurrensbaserad strategi medan för originalläkemedel dominerar en värdebaserad prissättning, med få inslag av en lönsamhetsdriven prissättningsstrategi. / Background and problem discussion: The pharmaceutical industry is an industry that is characterized by high costs for research and development as well as a significantly long development phase of pharmaceuticals. In addition, the industry is faced with a number of requirements and regulations from authorities which, among other things, give rise to a complex pricing system. Previous research shows that costs are often a central part of pricing and that different pricing strategies should be used over the product life cycle. Studies also show how a product portfolio should be created and how pricing should be taken into consideration. Common to these studies are that they have neither studied companies that have high costs for research and development as well as are facing a number of government regulations, nor how the studies relate to strategy, which motivates this study. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to analyze which pricing strategies that are used by companies in the research-based pharmaceutical industry from a strategic perspective where the company's product portfolio and the products' life cycle are taken into account. The study aims to contribute with both practical and theoretical knowledge by making the study's results partly as a model that illustrates how internal and external factors affect each other and have an influence on strategic choices in the pharmaceutical companies' pricing process, and partly by broadening the knowledge of pricing of pharmaceuticals. Methodology: The study is a qualitative interview study based on empirical material collected through semi-structured interviews with respondents from seven pharmaceutical companies. Conclusion: The study shows that there is a connection between the pharmaceutical companies' strategy, portfolio selection, pricing and product life cycle. The main factors that is concerned in the pharmaceutical companies' reasoning behind the determined price depends on whether it is a generic or original pharmaceutical, the competitive situation, the cost effectiveness of the pharmaceutical and the willingness of society to pay. Furthermore, the Swedish system for pricing pharmaceuticals has a crucial importance for both how the companies reason and for which pricing strategies that are used. Which pricing strategy that is applied depends on the type of pharmaceutical being concerned. For generic pharmaceuticals companies consistently embrace a competitive strategy while for original pharmaceuticals value-based pricing dominates, with few elements of a profit-driven pricing strategy.

Hybrid-electric technologies have recently been introduced into the market for heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs). However, challenging an established technology with a new and untried technology is difficult, also under the best conditions. Forecasting is a vital tool in product portfolio management, since it provides guidance on how much resources a firm should allocate on new innovative projects and products and when and where to enter the market. Therefore, this thesis forecasts the market penetration of hybrid HDVs in Europe by usage of innovation diffusion models – based on three different market scenarios assuming no, some and considerable incentives or legislative CO2 for HDVs. Hybrid-electric, hydraulic hybrid and flywheel hybrid vehicles are considered and an analogical approach is used based on sales data for radial tyres, disc brakes and anti-lock braking systems. The result from a non-linear regression analysis indicated that innovation diffusion models of mixed influence are capable of predicting future market demand, not only of hybrid HDVs, but also of other HDVs with new innovative technologies or solutions. Therefore, it was suggested that innovation diffusion modeling should be a standard tool in the strategic planning of a HDV firm’s all new innovative products. All market scenarios resulted in a rather low diffusion speed of hybrid HDVs during the first ten years, but the speed increased then rapidly during the next ten years such that 40-50 percent of the HDV market was penetrated in 2030. In the most hybrid-friendly scenario, the market was nearly fully penetrated after 50 years since the first introduction in 2010, while in the least hybrid-friendly scenario additional ten years was needed to fully penetrate the HDV market. The forecasts may be affected by possible pre-diffusion, the emergence of a dominant design or the diffusion acceleration effect. One of the major challenges of using innovation diffusion models for sales forecasting of hybrid HDVs, was to find appropriate and sufficient analogous sales data. Therefore, Thomas (1985) analogous approach was further developed to be more focused on finding analogous sales data from internal, external or public sources.

The increase in competition amongst companies that produce complex or large product portfolios has created a need to utilise modularity strategies not only to flexibly manage technical complexity in a costeffective manner but also for visual appearance. This research aims to understand how the visual appearance of products is affected by modular product development strategies. Specifically, the aim is to understand how such strategies induce constraints and generate possibilities for management of visual appearance in the design process. Five studies have been conducted during the course of this licentiate thesis. Two were conducted with professionals and students in design, while the remaining three are theoretical studies based on findings in the literature, theory building, and experimental research. The goal has been to investigate how designers work when they are put to the task of changing and developing the designs of complex products that are part of a portfolio. The challenge has been to study what suitable strategies exist that manage complex products and product brands, then investigate how these influence designers’ practices. The first study examined how coherence towards a product category influences the design of new products. The outcome of the study was a method to explore visual coherence and diversity in the appearance of a product category. The remaining four studies investigated how modularity, brand management and the redesign of product portfolios influence a design process. The second study described a design phenomenon known as aesthetic flexibility, which was further explored in studies three and five. The outcome from these studies was a proposal for four aesthetic flexibility strategies. The fourth study investigated in what way portfolio extension strategies found in brand management and design research are related, and how such strategies influence aesthetic flexibility. The results from study four were illustrated as a model. The main contribution of this work is the phenomenon of ‘aesthetic flexibility’, which helps understand the factors that influence designers when working with branded modular products. Understanding visual flexibility serves as a starting point in further investigations of how different development strategies affect the possibilities for visual product design. The findings of this work serve to illustrate and explain a complex and multi-facetted design phenomenon which many designers manage more or less intuitively today, thus advancing academics’, teachers’ and professional designers’ understanding of the field.

Date: 2023-06-04 Title: Identifying the product deletion decision-making process at a large multinational company Level: Master thesis in Industrial Engineering and Management, Product and Process development - 30 ECTS Institution: School of Innovation Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University Authors: Alan Abdulrahman & Johan Glenne Tutor: Angelina Sundström Keywords: Product deletion process; Product deletion decision-making; Product portfolio management - product deletion Aim: The purpose of this study is to identify how a large multinational company is managing its product portfolios, specifically how they conduct product deletion, and examine to what extent those decisions are influenced by external actors Research question: How does a large multinational company manage its product deletion decision-making and what role do external actors’ influences play? Methodology: This study is qualitative and utilizes an abductive approach where a theoretical framework has been created based on gatherings from a literature study combined with the empirical results based on five semi-structured interviews conducted with both local and global product managers at a large multinational company. Conclusion: This study has successfully identified how a large multinational company works with product deletion decision-making. The conclusion of this study is that the studied company has no formal ways of working with product deletion and that there is currently no way of evaluating a product deletion decision. This study has also identified that the influence that external actors have varies greatly depending on the actor, and the precise amount of influence is impossible to measure.

Today, there is a great need for companies to be dynamic and cope with the fast-changing environment to stay competitive, stressing the need for well-defined processes for innovation and product portfolio management. For larger companies, it has been proven to be difficult to change traditional ways of working and adjust to new changes. Stora Enso is a large company, consisting of six different divisions with individual products, markets and processes for innovation and managing product life cycles. The lack of a common process causes problems in communicating, comparing results, and sharing resources between the divisions. In order to work in a more unified way, the company decided to introduce a cross-divisional process called Product Life Cycle Process (PLCP). The purpose of this study is therefore to analyze how a large company works with and manages the implementation of a new process and identify what challenges the company might face when dealing with this type of change. A literature study was performed in order to collect information regarding change management, innovation and product portfolio management processes as well as the implementation of these. Since the PLCP should be used in all divisions, information was collected by qualitative interviews from all six divisions to understand their plans, challenges and success factors. The results showed that all divisions were positive about the implementation of the new PLCP on a divisional level and saw benefits with the PLCP having similarities to their old ways of working, making the adaptation somewhat easier. The greatest challenges mentioned were lack of defined ownership and roles, employee resistance, lack of resources, flexibility, and support from management. All the divisions were also positive towards the company having one joint process and could see potential benefits like an overall common understanding and improved transparency between divisional products and projects. However, the greatest challenge mentioned was the fundamental differences between the divisions due to different products, projects, and strategies. To be able to meet changes in trends, needs, and requirements from customers, the study proved that Stora Enso is going in the right direction with the implementation of a joint process. Introducing the PLCP enables the company to speed up innovation and to commercialize products faster. Following are future recommendations provided for the company to further manage the implementation and work with the PLCP. Stora Enso needs to communicate a clear vision for how the company should handle the implementation and implement one IT-tool that includes managing products, support infrastructure, and performance measuring. They should also provide all managers and employees training and collect feedback from all divisions throughout the implementation. Stora Enso should also create and define clear product definitions and ownership roles for each division and take into consideration the different prerequisites of the division when planning the implementation of the PLCP. The company must therefore provide different time plans and financial support to the divisions based on their preconditions. / Det är viktigt för företag att vara dynamiska och konkurrenskraftiga för att klara av de snabba förändringar som sker på dagens marknader. Detta gör att det blir allt viktigare för ett företag att ha väldefinierade processer för både innovation och produktportföljhantering. Dock har det visat sig att större företag har svårt att ändra sina traditionella processer för att möta nya förändringar. Stora Enso är ett stort företag som består av sex divisioner med olika produkter, marknader och processer för innovation och produktlivscykler. Divisionerna har upplevt problem med att jobba på olika sätt eftersom de saknar en gemensam kommunikation, har svårt att jämföra resultat och dela resurser mellan divisionerna. Därför har nu företaget valt att introducera en gemensam produktprocess, kallad Product Life Cycle Process (PLCP), som alla divisioner ska jobba efter. Syftet av denna studie därför att analysera hur ett stort företag genomför och hanterar en implementation av en ny process och identifiera vilka utmaningar som företag kan uppleva under en sådan typ av förändring. En litteraturstudie utfördes för att hitta relevant litteratur om förändringshantering, innovation- och produktportföljhanteringprocesser samt hur dessa implementeras i ett företag. Eftersom PLCP skulle användas på alla sex divisioner så utfördes kvalitativa intervjuer med medarbetare på alla divisioner för att förstå divisionernas planer, utmaningar och de möjligheter de såg. Resultatet från intervjuerna visade att alla divisioner var positivt inställda till implementeringen av PLCP på en divisionsnivå och såg fördelar med att PLCP var lik många av divisionernas tidigare arbetssätt, vilket kunde göra det enklare att anpassa sig till den nya processen. Den största utmaningen som nämndes var bristen på definierade ägarroller, motstånd från anställda, brist på resurser, processens inflexibilitet och brist på stöd från ledningen. Alla divisioner var också positivt inställda till att alla inom företaget arbetar med en gemensam process och kunde se potentiella fördelar såsom en övergripande, gemensam förståelse samt förbättrad transparens mellan divisionernas produkter och projekt. Den största utmaningen var dock de grundläggande skillnaderna mellan divisionerna till följd av deras olika produkter, projekt och strategier. För att kunna möta föränderliga trender, krav och behov från kunder visar denna studie att Stora Enso går i rätt riktning genom att implementera en gemensam process. Implementering av processen möjliggör snabbare arbete med innovation och kommersialisering av produkter. Följande rekommendationer för att hantera implementeringen och fortsatt arbetet med PLCP presenterades till företaget. Stora Enso måste kommunicera en tydlig vision för hur företaget ska hantera implementeringen, samt implementera ett IT-verktyg som inkluderar hantering av produkter, en supportinfrastruktur och resultatmätning. De bör också ge alla chefer och anställda utbildning samt samla in feedback från alla divisioner genom hela implementeringen. Stora Enso bör också skapa och definiera tydliga produktdefinitioner samt ägarroller för varje division och ta hänsyn till divisionernas olika förutsättningar vid planering av implementeringen. Företaget bör därför tillhandahålla olika tidsplaner och ekonomiskt stöd till de olika divisionerna utifrån deras förutsättningar.

The thesis work aimed at developing a framework for portfolio management and business case development that can be used as decision support for a company for new product development. The assignment was to study relevant literature resulting in an aggregated view on this topic and the parameters that impact successful product development. The literature involves project initiation, different levels of product innovation development and information about important research criteria to include when forming new product projects ideas. This information helps to support how to objectively evaluate and compare product projects. The literature also involves different relevant tools to use for providing information and manage product portfolio management along with their benefits. Out of this aggregated view, a template and suggested decision model specific for the company has been established. The resulting template has for purpose to be used for preparation of providing a solid information base when a new product project idea is to be presented. The decision base has the purpose to help the members and managers in the product council to form a decision on what product idea to proceed with, which hopefully will result into launch and success. The framework aims to assess individual product development initiatives as well as managing the product portfolio aspect. Except the study of a considerable amount of literature, qualitative research has been made as well. The qualitative research has been performed in the form of semi-structured interviews together with people within the company that has been used as case study in this report. The interviews contributes with information about the current state of the company’s product offering process together with attention paid for what is missing and what improvements that is sought. In such way, the qualitative research contribute to the result of the framework in the sense that it is attributed towards the company in the case study and thus slightly towards technological network industries, although the framework is made for a generic use. As by this thesis, the framework focus on one company, but it has for purpose to be adaptable and inspiring for any company with respect for the individual company’s restrictions.