An empirical analysis of the valley of death: Large‐scale R&D project performance in a Japanese diversified company

Summary The purpose of this study is to contribute reference material that provides insight into innovative process management that increases R&D output in commercializing new products. A model of a process from research to commercialization with the cumulative profit and loss curve is put forward and hypotheses related to success and failure are developed at the stages up to product launch. Seventeen large projects that have resulted in successful product launches have been examined from the initial research stage to commercialization. Project duration, standardized cumulative R&D expenditures and research resource concentration are analyzed in terms of statistical method and patterns in cumulative profit and loss curves after product sales, as well as the reasons for and other aspects of success/failure are investigated and analyzed. Consequently, valuable information on future management tasks has been obtained such as: (1) project duration differs depending on market sectors, product types and presence/absenceof materials research (2) cumulative profit and loss curves can be categorized into four patterns (3) reasons for failure can be divided into technological and market problem categories and (4) these factors have an impact on product sales.