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This paper outlines the use of quality function deployment (QFD) for strategic planning. QFD provides a comprehensive process for defining the issues facing an organisation in terms of customer and stakeholder outcomes, natural segments and key strategic opportunities.

An explanation and overview of the two core stages of strategic planning using QFD are followed by three case examples.

Strategic QFD avoids complex matrix analysis and instead moves directly to concept generation and evaluation. One of the main benefits of strategic QFD is the level of commitment and support for the resulting strategy throughout the organisation. This paper also shows how strategic QFD can be used to identify and optimise internal capabilities and to find and address specific customer opportunities.

Strategic planners will find that QFD‐based philosophy and methods are useful tools for the creation of a customer‐driven strategy.

This paper provides insight for practitioners and academics into how strategic QFD systematically translates vision into action, targeting opportunities and creating innovative strategies that are stable even in fast‐changing environments.

The purpose of this paper is to create a benchmark and identify best practices for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) for both tangible product‐based and service product‐based development project portfolios.

A questionnaire was developed to gather data to compare the PPM methods used, PPM performance, PPM challenges, and resulting new product success measures in 60 Australian organisations in a diverse range of service and manufacturing industries.

The paper finds that PPM practices are shown to be very similar for service product development project portfolios and tangible product development project portfolios. New product success rates show strong correlation with measures of PPM performance and the use of some PPM methods is correlated with specific PPM performance outcomes.

The findings in this paper are based on a survey of a diverse sample of 60 Australian organisations. The results are strengthened by comparisons with similar North American research; however, they may not be representative of all environments. Research in other regions would further qualify the findings. As each organisation's PPM process is unique, case study methods are recommended for future studies to capture more of the complexity in the environment.

The paper shows that PPM practitioners and executives who make decisions about the development of tangible products and/or service products will benefit from the findings.

This paper extends the existing understanding of PPM practices to include service development project portfolios as well as tangible product development project portfolios and strengthens the links between PPM practices and outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to summarise a recent doctoral thesis on the relationship between project portfolio management (PPM) and competitive advantage in service and manufacturing organisations.

This two‐phase mixed method study comprises a quantitative questionnaire‐based survey and a qualitative multiple‐case study to address the “what” and the “how” of the research questions.

This paper adopts a “dynamic capabilities” perspective, drawing on organisational learning theory to explain the path‐dependent nature of PPM capability development and how PPM capabilities work with the resource base to enhance competitive advantage. Findings support prior PPM studies and suggest a positive relationship between structured PPM capabilities and improved outcomes. The research compares service and manufacturing environments; future challenges are likely to result from the increasing blurring of the boundaries between service and manufacturing industries.

The research has four main practical outcomes: development of a model representing the overall PPM capability; a benchmark for and guidance on specific PPM processes and methods; guidance on the types of organisational learning investments that enhance the establishment and evolution of PPM capabilities; and the initial development of an outcomes and learning‐based maturity model for PPM capabilities.

This paper produces the first benchmark of innovation PPM capabilities in Australia, and is the first to include service product‐focused portfolios. It is the first study that identifies PPM capabilities as dynamic capability, allowing existing research to be viewed through the dynamic capability lens and, more importantly, providing a theoretical underpinning that may influence future research and practice.

Introduced to the West from Japan, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a powerful approach to customer‐focused product development. In recent years, many practitioners and academics have recognized the potential of these methods and applied them to strategic formulation and decision making as well. Earlier reviews of the documented accounts of QFD‐based approaches to strategy have been presented at the 7th International Symposium on QFD in Tokyo in 2001, and at the 8th International Symposium on QFD in Munich in 2002. This paper updates these reviews, identifying the parallels and contrasts evident in these cases with the techniques of hoshin kanri (also known as policy deployment). The paper then briefly describes a case study of the application of a comprehensive QFD‐based methodology. Leveraging these insights, the paper seeks to address the future direction of the development of this promising field of strategic methodology.