The Innovation Potential of Universities - An Explorative Analysis

Knowledge-based innovations are a main driver for economic development of countries and a key factor in global competition. Most industrial countries aim to strengthen their innovative capacity breadthways. Beside large firms especially universities have the necessary potential (infrastructure and knowledge) to be regional drivers of innovations. They develop innovative ideas on their own and even more important support R&D-activities of the local economy. This paper offers a methodological framework for exploring the potential for commercialization within universities. The importance of inventions, publications and third-party funds as objective indicators is highlighted, and an additive value function is introduced to measure the potential for commercialization. Based on expert interviews at a technical university the required weights for all considered indicators are exemplarily identified. By applying different models to aggregate expert weights robust rankings of university units with respect to percapita and overall potential for commercialization were found. Based on these measures a central transfer unit could be able to allocate transfer-oriented resources properly. The specified scoring approach is a first step towards an EU-requested evaluation system.