Applying a method for measuring the performance of university-industry R&D collaborations: case study analysis

Collaborations between university and industry are possibly the most important strategic instrument used to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of industrial investments in Research and Development (R&D), and have been increasing, which assigns even more importance to the need for measuring their performance. Therefore, a method to measure university-industry R&D collaborations, named MPUIC, developed based on Design Science Research methodology (DSRM), was applied and validated through a case study. This paper firstly describes some improvements made to the previously developed MPUIC method before its application to a large program between the University of Minho and Bosch Car Multimedia (Portugal). The MPUIC method adopted a weighted scoring approach, and is composed by 31 performance indicators, distributed through the program management life cycle. Secondly, the performance measurement of the case study program is conducted, resulting in a score of 4.4 in a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 indicates "very high" performance. Finally, a questionnaire was administered to evaluate the developed method and, from the 31 performance indicators that compose the method, 29 were evaluated as having a level of relevance above 3 in a scale of 1 to 5 and, from these, 19 were evaluated as having a level of relevance equal to or above 4.This research is sponsored by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia FCT (SFRH/BPD/111033/2015), and by the Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development. Project in co-promotion nº 039479/2018 (FoF 2018-2021