The performance measurement of research commercialization in universities and research centers (Case study: Norway)

With increasing the importance of research commercialization, significant efforts are being conducted to commercialize researches in universities and research centers. Hence, assessing commercialization activities and identifying criteria and indicators for measuring the performance of commercialization are essential. In this paper, by reviewing the present data sources, the measurement indicators of commercialization activity in the universities and research centers of the leading countries in particular Malaysia, Australia and Norway are recognized, and as a case study the ones in Norway are analyzed. With library method and by referring to databases and government reports, the data researches are collected; the documents and the previous studies records are analyzed with exploratory approach. Among the most important recognized criteria and indicators, besides the general indicators of measuring commercialization, one can point out the industrial investment volume in R&D of the number of suggested ideas offered by the universities and research institutes with commercial potential, number of patent applications and patents, number of license deals and licensing income, number of founded spin-off companies and their performances, and joint scientific publications between universities and industry. Analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a number of the indicators and also ranking of the five universities under study based on the aforementioned indicators are another part of the present research results. Furthermore, some suggestions about the way of measuring the commercialization of the results of universities researches are presented. It is expected that the proposed indicators cover the various dimensions and aspects of commercialization and they are used by our universities and research centers in assessing the commercialization performance of their strategic plans.