A Balanced Scorecard for Open Innovation: Measuring the Impact of Industry-University Collaboration

Abstract

Abstract. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) can be considered as a strategic measurement tool. Since its first publication by Norton and Kaplan in the early 1990's, many companies have applied it to measure four key aspects of their organisations' performance: Financial, Customer, Internal Business Process, Learning and Growth. Although it is widely used in the business arena, this original BSC was not developed to assess the impact of collaborative research projects under an open innovation strategy, where the outputs of research and development (R&D) developed by collaborative projects undertaken by industry and universities should be measured in a different way. In fact, many companies are losing important opportunities to spur their R&D results by not being able to quantify the results of such collaborations. Therefore, this paper will propose a Scorecard to measure the outcomes of collaborative research. It is important to recall that this scorecard has been developed during a collaborative research project by CEMEX Research Group AG (Switzerland) and Cranfield University (UK). During such project, a survey was developed to carry out eleven face-to-face interviews in a sample of ten companies in UK, which provided important inputs to design such strategic scorecard. It was confirmed that a collaborative balanced scorecard is a very useful tool to measure, track and improve the impact of conducting collaborative projects with universities.

A balanced scorecard for measuring the impact of industry–university collaboration

“…CEMEX -Cranfield University research project objectives This study is a collaboration between CEMEX and Cranfield University with the following objectives (Flores et al 2009):…”

“…During such project, a survey was developed to carry out interviews in a sample of 10 companies in UK, where it was confirmed that a collaborative BSC is a very useful tool to measure, track and improve the impact of conducting collaborative projects with universities. This article is an extended version of the one presented at the PRO-VE'09 conference (Flores et al 2009. A balanced scorecard for measuring the impact of industry-university collaboration.…”

Concept mapping of the Balanced Scorecard in higher education

“…São notórias as evidências de que a incorporação de novos predicados ao BSC ao longo do tempo, buscam atender a demanda por adaptabilidade às demandas do ensino superior. Ainda na Figura 2, pode-se inferir que as incorporações identificadas levam de encontro ao atendimento da necessidade de ajustes para a melhoria do modelo quando aplicado às universidades, e, mais especificamente, ao saneamento de algumas deficiências, como por exemplo, as fragilidades quando da utilização do BSC para avaliação do impacto entre R&D relatado por Flores et al (2009) …”

Value Systems Management Model for Co-innovation

“…Chesbrough [3] defends that for firms to be able to successfully implement the co-innovation business model, they have to be capable of sharing their knowledge, being flexible and being responsive. However, Flores et al [2] defend another set of characteristics as being the most important ones for working in an co-innovation business model. Although there is no unique set of common characteristics accepted by the researchers, it is acknowledged that the set of core-values taken by each firm, determine their behaviour in the collaboration process of creation.…”

“…Co-innovation is a new business paradigm where it is assumed that firms or individual persons can establish a partnership with the aim of jointly developing new ideas and new products [1]. These kinds of partnerships raise new challenges in the scope of trust management and intellectual property management [2,3], since the balance between intellectual property sharing and intellectual property protection is hard to manage. Moreover, if partners have different perceptions of outcomes and different notions of the expected behavior, this might, in some cases, lead to some behaviors that compromise collaboration sustainability.…”