Effectiveness of R&D project selection in uncertainenvironment: An empirical study in the GermanAutomotive Supplier industry

This paper presents results of an empirical large-scale study on uncertainty reduction of R&Dprojects and R&D project selection. The empirical field is the German automotive supplierindustry. We explore R&D project selection practices in this specific industry and briefly contrastour findings with the academic research and management literature in this field. We concentrate onanswering three research questions (with focus on questions no. 1 and 2):I. Which information and related uncertainties are crucial for the product selection decision to theR&D decision makers?II. How do R&D decision makers today cope with typical challenges related to reducinguncertainty? Where do they face major problems and how effective are they?III. What are major implications for managing the Fuzzy Front End (FFE) of innovation process inindustry practice and respectively for further academic research in this field?Key findings are that on the one hand certainty about fields of product applications, target marketsand production feasibility are most important criteria for initial product selection decisions. On theother hand market and cost related uncertainties (e.g. sales volume, product price, cost per unit)cannot be satisfyingly reduced in practice before project approval...