Innovating without wasting resources, with Project Portfolio Management

In the past, companies could afford to innovate “in bursts”: a few large projects, reasonable timelines, relatively abundant resources, and a sufficiently stable strategy to absorb errors and inefficiencies. Today, that margin no longer exists. In a context marked by uncertainty, resource scarcity, and continuous change, argue Elena Coffetti and Alfredo Biffi in their Project Portfolio Management.  Logiche e strumenti per creare valore con il portafoglio progetti (Project Portfolio Management. Logics and tools to create value with the project portfolio, EGEA, 2025, in Italian)), the ability to create value depends not only on having good ideas, but also on knowing how to choose, combine, and redirect the right projects over time.

This is where Project Portfolio Management (PPM) becomes a central lever of corporate governance: the mechanism through which strategy, innovation, and resource allocation are held together in a coherent and dynamic way.

The volume guides the reader through this paradigm shift. After framing the transition from process-based management to the Project Based Enterprise, the book defines PPM as a key organizational decision-making process. The central chapters deal with the design of the PPM system: from defining the portfolio strategy to demand management, project evaluation, selection, and balancing mechanisms, up to decision-support tools. The final section shifts the focus to organization, governance, and the sustainability of the system over time, showing how PPM cannot function without clear roles, appropriate skills, and a coherent managerial culture. 

PPM is closely linked to innovation, which cannot be entrusted to isolated initiatives or individual corporate functions: it takes shape through projects that compete for limited resources and must be assessed not only individually, but as a whole. PPM makes it possible to transform innovation from an episodic phenomenon into an organizational capability, making value criteria explicit, consciously accepting risk, and, above all, creating the conditions to stop or redirect projects that no longer contribute to strategy. In this sense, the portfolio becomes the space in which the company’s strategic agility is exercised. 

Project Portfolio Management is aimed at managers, executives, and professionals working in multi-project environments who perceive the growing gap between strategic plans and execution capacity. It is a useful book for those who must decide how to invest scarce resources, how to balance innovation initiatives and operational continuity, and how to make complexity manageable. But it is also a valuable read for those concerned with organization, strategy, and control, because it shows how PPM can become the common language through which companies stop pursuing too many projects and begin, methodically, to focus on the ones that truly matter.

• Publisher: EGEA
• Publication date: 2026
• Pages: 256
• ISBN/EAN: 9791222981482
• Format: Print, e-Pub

ELENA COFFETTI is Associate Professor of Practice in Decision Analysis at the Department of Economics, Politics, and Decision Sciences at SDA Bocconi School of Management, where she teaches Project Management, Business Data Analytics, and Financial Modelling & Planning.

ALFREDO BIFFI is Associate Professor of Organization and Human Resource Management at the University of Insubria, Adjunct Professor at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and Academic Fellow at SDA Bocconi School of Management, where he teaches Project Management and Information Systems.