Title: R&D networks: an evaluation framework

Authors: Alessandro Sala, Paolo Landoni, Roberto Verganti

Addresses: Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, Milano 20133, Italy. ' Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, Milano 20133, Italy. ' Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, Milano 20133, Italy

Abstract: R&D networks have been studied and promoted by scholars and policy makers as a way to increase the performance of innovation systems. At the same time, limited attention has been devoted to evaluate their performances. This paper reviews the literature that studied R&D networks from different approaches and suggests a framework to help developing evaluation systems for R&D networks. The framework is based on a network model that highlights the main elements and characteristics of an R&D network, underlines the opportunity of three different perspectives of evaluation and has been applied and tested on three case studies.

Keywords: research networks; research evaluation; technology transfer; network models; indicators; network performance; R&D networks; research and development; innovation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2011.037236

International Journal of Technology Management, 2011 Vol.53 No.1, pp.19 - 43

Published online: 06 Apr 2013 *

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