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1. Introduction
Developing systems of indicators to evaluate the performance of the collaborations that enable firms to innovate and periodically measure the results of these collaborations is of paramount importance. Measuring the results can ensure that a collaboration develops efficiently and effectively. Moreover, it can allow an understanding of when changes to the organization and/or the objectives of the collaboration are needed.
However, developing and using systems of indicators to evaluate collaborations aimed at producing innovation outcomes is far from simple. Innovation is, by its very nature, a complex and multidimensional concept. It eludes traditional metrics and needs a broad range of indicators developed for evaluation purposes ([57] Smith, 2005). In addition, if innovation takes place within collaborations that involve more parties, its complexity further increases proportionately to the heterogeneity of the parties. The more diverse the structural and institutional characteristics, and the goals of the parties, the more difficult is to draw contracts (and define tacit rules) to govern the collaboration, and, thus, to establish an evaluation system to monitor the development of the collaboration over time. The case of university-industry alliances is prototypical of what has been described so far.
Firms more and more frequently establish collaborative relationships with universities as a consequence of the ongoing changes in the role of universities. Indeed, universities are increasingly active in technology transfer activities, including the creation and incubation of technology-based ventures, patenting, licensing, collaborative research, contract research and consulting ([63] Wright et al. , 2008)[1] . However, a firm that has profit as its ultimate goal has objectives, knowledge bases, incentives and governance structures that are very different from those of a university, for which technology transfer is still a "third" mission ([23] Etzkowitz, 2003), which historically follows the key missions of teaching and scientific research. This diversity poses managerial challenges to firms that establish collaborations with universities. Therefore, it is no surprise that, in spite of a few exceptions that will be discussed in the following, structured and commonly accepted systems of indicators aimed at measuring the performance of university-industry collaborations do not exist yet. In this article, we aim at moving a first step to fill this gap in the literature. We focus on a particular type of university-industry collaborations, namely the...