How different R&D project types are terminated

This paper studies the main reasons given for early termination of different types of New Product Development (NPD) projects. Early termination here means before reaching its objectives. Our case study, a large Brazilian chemical company, is a B2B operation with three types of NPD projects: line extension, new application and innovation. We found that they mostly replace decisions to kill projects with project prioritization. Managers prefer to keep projects in the pipeline, even in stand-by, instead of terminating them. Moreover, they apply different criteria for deprioritizing/killing each type of project. The most used criteria for line extension and new application projects are the expected financial results, followed by customer interest in the resulting product. Costumer commitment is also more relevant for line extensions than new applications. For innovation projects, the former criteria are less stringent and greater emphasis is put on the strategic fit.