Projects aren’t always evaluated on merit. R&D panels have a few biases that end up impacting what gets funded and what doesn't.
Theodora chairs the R&D selection panel at a global professional service firm. She recently had to lead the committee in deciding whether to fund a proposal from an up-and-coming engineer and one of the company’s business leaders. The project focused on how to design rooms in intensive care units to minimize sleep disruption and facilitate healing. Gerhard, from the infrastructure group in Munich, started the discussion: “This project is just too out there. It is not really what we do.
In this company – like in many other large organizations – a panel of different managers and engineers comes together to discuss what they think is worth funding. We studied 556 different project applications, and conducted interviews and observations inside the company. Our findings, recently, are that managers don’t always carefully weigh the pros and cons of each project and that biases can creep into the decision-making process.
To avoid the panel workload bias that prevents managers from seeking novelty, companies could limit the number of projects the selection committee has to screen at once. One strategy could involve “binning” projects, which means designating windows for people to submit proposals and then convening a selection panel when a “bin” is full, rather than at a set date or time of year. This way, sufficient managerial attention could be devoted to each project under evaluation.
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