Innovation performance of Portuguese research innovation centers

• Autor(a) principal: Neto, Carlos Palhas Silvestre
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/21584
• topic: Research innovation centers; Innovation measurement; Industry training; Innovation oerformance; Centros de interface; Medição de inovação; Capacitação da indústria; Performance de inovação

Research innovation centers establishes a fundamental role between institutions linked with scientific production and technological knowledge. They are defined as "liaison bodies between higher education institutions and companies, which are dedicated to the valorisation of products and services and to technology transfer". In this sense, they seek to identify and value technologies that can be useful for each company problems, leveraging innovation activities, reinforcing economic dynamism and strengthening business investment. The following dissertation proposes a research methodology structured in two systemic dimensions, focused on measuring innovation performance of each center. First dimension evaluates innovation potential that each entity is capable of generating. In turn, second dimension assesses the real state of innovation generated by them. To this end, two research questions have been established: "What is the role of research innovation centers in Portuguese innovation?" and " What is the performance in terms of innovation of the centers?". Following a methodology based on European Innovation Scoreboards, a stabilised composite indicator was constructed. Our results explain that, as expected, bigger research centers seem to have more potential capacity for innovation, nevertheless, measuring innovation potential (per employee) reveals a different picture. Matching innovation potential with real innovation performance we found that, contrary to what was expected from the gatherer project applications data, different centers have a better performance (especially when measured by employee). These findings are interesting since they display that, when size is taken out of the picture, real innovation performance is different and may lead to different funding approaches.