Managing the strategic fit of national R&D programme portfolios: the case of creative economy policy in Korea

National R&D programmes are an important means to raise investments for expediting national innovation policies. Since not all programmes are aligned with a government’s ultimate vision, the strategic fit of the R&D portfolio at the national-level should be monitored, evaluated, and managed. This study aims to evaluate the strategic fit of national R&D programmes with R&D policies and to offer advice regarding portfolio management from a national point of view for effective resource allocation. To this end, we use an approach that integrates the balanced scorecard (BSC) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The BSC model for R&D is used to translate national R&D strategy objectives into a set of coherent strategic fit factors. The AHP provides an evaluation of the strategic fit scores of national R&D programmes. Finally, the portfolio maps of strategic fit scores were developed for diagnosing national R&D programme portfolios. The proposed approach is applied to study a case of evaluating the national R&D programme portfolios for the creative economy policy in Korea. The BSC-AHP based portfolio map can be emphasized as a bridge between systematic programme evaluation and efficient strategic management.