Abstract
Abstract As part of contemporary Triple Helix operations, universities are more and more frequently asked to collaborate with other social actors to generate knowledge that supports their innovation and development activities and to foster economic growth. In addition to research and education tasks, universities are developing formal and informal collaborations with industrial organizations to fulfill the third mission of societal effectiveness and to receive funding from research grants. These university-industry research and development projects, at the societal level and from the viewpoints of policymakers and financiers, aim to create economic growth and to support the innovation and learning capabilities of the organizations, among other benefits. One key challenge to managing these collaborative activities between universities and other societal organizations is related to measuring and evaluating them. Therefore, this study focuses on supporting the future development of evaluation and performance measurement for the operational-level activities of university–industry–government relationships. The study explores the performance measurement practices currently used by universities and financiers and intends to increase the understanding of both current performance measurement practices and the challenges regarding university–industry (UI) collaboration projects. The empirical data for this study were gathered from UI research projects in Finland. As part of the management of university–industry–government relations and Triple Helix operations, the results of this study reveal some challenges in the evaluation and measurement of the collaborative projects in the three phases explored: before the project, during the project, and after the project. The study’s results indicate that UI collaboration projects’ performance evaluation practices are based mainly on the tasks promised in the projects’ applications. Furthermore, measurements are mainly used for external-reporting purposes. To support the future development of the evaluation and performance measurement of university–industry–government relations, some propositions for overcoming these challenges are presented, and the potential implications of the findings for scholars, university members, financier representatives, and policy makers are discussed.
Highlights
By participating in activities formed under Triple Helix models, different organizations are for example looking for external governmental funding support by forming collaboration activities and projects with universities
Though Lauras et al (2010) argued that each project manager should develop a range of KPIs for the projects, we believe that in order to develop KPIs to support the evaluation of the collaborative research and development projects involved in Triple Helix operations, university project managers need more academic and practical-level support to better recognize the current performance measurement frameworks suggested by academics
From a theoretical perspective and in contrast with the performance measurement practices of industrial projects, this study shows that in the management of university–industry–government relationships, original project applications are commonly used as the sole performance measurement framework for steering and evaluating UI research and development projects
Summary
Bahemia et al 2018; Bogers et al 2017) In these collaborations, organ izations are interested, for example, in gaining social capital or innovation capabilities rather than solving specific technical problems (Perkmann and Walsh 2007; Pinheiro et al 2016). As part of the Triple Helix-related operations, these more open strategies aiming to increase social capital and innovat ion capabilities create possibilities and cause challenges for university-industry collaborations, and, more research and understanding of the execution and management of these collaboration activities is needed. The aim of this study is to explore the curr ent operational-level performance measurement practices used and challenges faced by university via free access project managers and financier representatives when managing collaborative UI research and development projects under the Triple Helix umbrella. In this study, exploring the phenomenon at the operat ional level involves those who are executing the projects, including, for example, the project managers who are part of daily project operations and the financier delegates who actively follow the operations performed in those projects
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