Main findings of the study

The results of the study reveal that, even though there is a growing interest among academics and practitioners in better performance measurement practices in university-industry collaborations, the current situation is shaped by many challenges, and properly adopted and utilized performance measurement systems are rare. All participating and related stakeholder groups (university members, members from industrial and other societal organizations, financier delegates, and politicians/governmental decision-makers) have recognized the growing importance of the performance measurement methods and tools to support the evaluation of the university-industry collaboration. However, despite the growing interest of each of the stakeholder groups, they all seem to have individual evaluation activities and challenges, which are not collaboratively designed and adopted.

Even though the literature on performance management and measurement suggests that contemporary performance measurement systems should include a balanced set of measures that can be used to give a holistic understanding of the performance in university-industry collaborations, the current evaluation frameworks and methods seem not be balanced. The results of the study indicate that the main focus of the performance measurement activities in university-industry collaborations currently seem to be on supporting external communication and reporting tasks. Despite the growing interest and awareness related to organizations’ internal performance measurement in collaboration activities, for example, to evaluate the innovation capabilities of different organizations, the performance measurement in university-industry collaborations appear to be focused on issues that are reported to external stakeholders. Even these external performance measurement activities seem to be partially deficient and to focus primarily on the issues that are reported to financier delegates involved in the collaborations.

The results further reveal that currently in university-industry collaborations, relatively few resources are used in designing and building performance measurement frameworks and tools. It is a quite common practice that, after the prepared university-industry collaboration has received the acceptance from the financier delegates, the collaboration activities are started by following the original research plan or funding application. There might be a meeting or two where the “ground rules” for the collaboration activities are discussed together with the participants. In these meetings, the discussion related to performance measurement usually focuses on following and meeting the goals that are promised in the funding application. There does not seem to exist a culture where performance measurement methods or tools are designed together with the participants of the university-industry collaborations.

The results also indicate that the responsibility of operational level performance measurement in contemporary university-industry collaborations lies mainly on the shoulders of the university representatives. More precisely, it is usually a practice that one or two persons, usually the university project manager, pursues the performance measurement activities. This practice leads to a situation where the understanding of the collaborations’ performance personifies. It is of course good that the project manager has the best understanding of the project´s performance, but it also causes challenges for the evaluation if the person responsible for the performance measurement is unavailable for evaluation (for example, if he or she changes workplace during or after the collaboration activities).

As mentioned above, the main focus of the performance measurement in university-industry collaborations at the operational level seem to be on external reporting. Even though the university project managers mainly pursue the measurement activities, they do not generally focus on the internal and intellectual issues, such as increased learning, well-being of the university researchers, or the satisfaction of the participating organizations. Further, the focus of the performance measurement does not seem to be on the achievement of the universities or researchers’ own goals, such as the number of high-level academic publications or the number of new project proposals. Instead, the focus of the performance measurement seems to currently be on reporting the collaborations’ activities and performance to financier delegates. As mentioned above, the collaborations are mainly started without using time or resources to design and build the performance measurement systems. Due the lack of a collaborative design, the performance measurement activities are strongly connected to following the project application and reporting the results by reflecting them in terms of the original project application. This creates a situation where the measurement activities are mainly pursued by utilizing tangible measures, such as the amount of salaries and the number of workshops arranged.

From the perspective of the university, the results of this study show that, for the most part, in the university-industry collaborations, universities are the active players in designing and building the collaborations. University researchers usually prepare the project applications in response to certain calls from the financier delegates. During the preparation phase, they normally search for the possible industry or public organizations that they could collaborate with. The current situation of decreasing governmental funding support for university-industry collaborations is causing stricter norms and regulations for the financing of programs. For that reason, many of the participating organizations have to carefully consider which collaborations they can participate in with universities. Even though the topic and theme of the funding call might be attractive for industrial organizations, the fee for participation may be so high that, despite the interest, the organizations cannot afford to participate. For that reason, in many cases, university researchers are not interested in evaluating the most suitable partners beforehand, but are more likely to search for the candidates that are suitable and that can afford to participate in collaboration activities. As university researchers and project managers are not that interested in the performance measurement activities before the collaborations are started, their main focus of the performance measurement seems to be on the evaluation activities during the collaboration.

The performance measurement activities are executed during the projects, and directly after

they are finished. In other words, the performance measurement activities focus on the evaluation of activities while they are running and the evaluation of short-term outputs that can be tracked right after the collaborations. Even though it has been recognized in previous studies on university-industry collaboration that the majority of the outcomes of these collaborations are only realized after a certain amount of time (e.g., three to five years), performance measurement activities with this long-term perspective are rare. After the collaboration activities are finished, university project managers and researchers are continuing on to new collaboration projects or to other university-related tasks. It seems to be the current situation that there do not exist collaboration activities where resources (salaries) would have been allocated to long-term evaluation.

Even though the performance measurement activities in university-industry collaborations are currently mainly pursued by university participants, the results of the study indicate that other organizations participating in these collaborations are also interested in the measurement. Industrial organizations participating in the collaboration activities seem to be interested in the evaluation of the outputs and societal-level outcomes of the collaborations, even though they face some challenges in understanding the interplay between the intellectual capital-related collaboration activities and evaluation of business-related outputs and outcomes. The results of the study also reveal that the involvement of the participating organizations (industrial, public, or third sector) in designing, building, and using performance measurement can increase the participants’ understanding of and motivation for the collaboration.

The results of the study also shed light on the contemporary performance measurement practices and challenges of the financier delegates in university-industry collaborations.

Compared with university participants, financier delegates use much more time and effort in the evaluation of the project applications before the collaboration activities. By doing so, they are attempting to find the best possible collaborations that should be financed and the ones that are the most suitable for the funding calls. In the current economic situation, financier delegates are also paying careful attention to the evaluation of the participating organizations’ possibilities to “survive” through the collaboration. There have been several cases where industrial organizations participating in collaboration activities have faced bankruptcy during the collaboration. These situations naturally cause harm and challenges for other participants of the collaborations, and for that reason, the financier delegates are trying to avoid these situations by evaluating the participating organizations’ economic situation. After the project applications are accepted and collaboration activities started, the financier delegates focus on the performance measurement to insure that the collaboration activities are executed as they were planned in the application phase and that they are achieving their goals. During the collaboration activities, challenges for the financier delegates arise when the collaborations are not following their original plans. As there usually do not exist performance measurement systems that would have been designed in the beginning of the collaborations, the changes in tasks and goals of the collaborations might be hard for the financier delegates to evaluate. For that reason, the results of this study indicate that it would to be easier for all the participating organizations and for the financier delegates to follow the project applications or project plans, even though, in some cases, it would not be reasonable. Compared with university participants, financier delegates use

more time and effort to conduct long-term performance measurement and evaluation of the university-industry collaborations. They are interested in finding good practices and long-term effective outcomes that could be used for other collaborations. However, despite the interests of the financier delegates in the long-term performance measurement of university-industry collaborations, the lack of collaborative performance measurement systems and the personification of the performance measurement also causes challenges for the financier delegates. If the person who was responsible for the performance measurement during the collaboration is not available for the long-term evaluation purposes, the measurement will be challenging.

The results of the study also reveal that, in university-public organizations, the collaborative performance measurement design and building process can be used to overcome the challenges related to evaluation of such collaborations. The results from the case study show that university-public organization collaboration combines performance measurement challenges that are characteristic for university-industry collaboration and public sector performance measurement. Based on the results of this study, the involvement of the participants at an early stage to performance measurement design and building process increases the participants’ understanding of the role of performance measurement in university-public organization collaboration.

Finally, the results show that, related to regional development activities, university-industry collaborations are mainly pursued at the operational level, which also refers to performance measurement. As the participating stakeholders are primarily concerned about developing collaborative research and development activities at the operational level, the participants face challenges in understanding the connection between the operational level development activities and regional level development. When designing and building the performance measurement systems for such regional development-related university-industry collaborations, attention must be paid to connecting the operational level development activities to upper level programs and mechanisms.

The findings of the study are summarized in Figure 7. Even though the literature on performance measurement in university-industry collaborations has suggested that performance measurement activities should pay close attention to the interests of all participating stakeholders (Figure 6), the results show that the current reality differs from that situation (presented in blue in Figure 7). The current performance measurement activities in university-industry collaboration focus strongly on the measurement and evaluation of financier delegates’ interests and the evaluation of tangible and short-term aspects of the collaborations.

Figure 7. The current focus of the performance measurement in university-industry collaborations.