Valuing R&D Projects in a Portfolio: Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract Understanding the value of a product development project is central to a firm’s choice of project portfolio. The value of a project to a firm depends not only on the project’s properties but also on the other projects being developed by the firm. This is due to interactions with other projects in the portfolio that address the same consumer need and with other projects that require the same development resources. In this study, we empirically investigate the structure and significance of these portfolio-level project interactions. Using a pharmaceutical industry dataset that we develop, we conduct an event study around the failure of phase III clinical trials, which exploits the natural experiment of a product development failure to give us a measure of the value of a drug development project to a firm. We then explain the variance in the value of projects based on interactions with other projects in the firm’s portfolio. We find that the presence of other projects targeting the same market and a build-up of projects that require the same development resources reduce the value of a development project. In addition to providing evidence on the significance and structure of these portfolio-level project interactions, the empirical model estimated in this paper also provides a data-driven approach to valuing projects that may be the focus of licensing transactions.