Planning innovation orientation in public research and development organizations: Using a combined Delphi and Analytic Hierarchy Process approach

Abstract

Planning innovation orientation in public research and development (R&D) organizations presents a number of challenges exacerbated by continuous changes in citizens' social aspirations. These challenges are further amplified by the unstable and complex socio-cultural and socio-organizational characteristics of any developing economy. The paper explores and devises an adapted orientation for future innovation using a combined Delphi and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach, applied to a developing country, i.e. Thailand. A set of generic influencing factors for innovation management in public R&D, emerged from a non-country specific review, are refined by a three-round Delphi consultation involving experts from various Thai national research centers. These factors were further utilized to establish an AHP-based model applied to a Thai public R&D organization to investigate impacts of three hypothesized innovation orientations: “knowledge”, “societal” and “commercial”. The AHP-based model reveals that the “commercial orientation” has the highest impact score on innovation factors. However, a sensitivity analysis is conducted as a result of which a suggestion is made to increase the priority of collaboration-related factors to improve the impact of the “societal orientation”. The findings from the combined Delphi and AHP approach have a generic dimension that can be adapted and tested in other contexts.