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Balanced score card implementation for IP rights management in a public research institution

Bernhard Smandek (Technology Transfer Officer at Physikalisch‐Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany)
Andreas Barthel (Innovation Manager at Physikalisch‐Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany)
Jens Winkler (Bundesamt Fuer Verbraucherschutz Und Lebensmittelsicherheit (BVL), Braunschweig, Germany. Peter Ulbig is Department Head at Physikalisch‐Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany)
Peter Ulbig (Department Head at Physikalisch‐Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany)

Measuring Business Excellence

ISSN: 1368-3047

Article publication date: 16 November 2010

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Abstract

Purpose

There is a growing awareness of intellectual property (IP) rights in European public research institutes. Since 2008 a non‐binding recommendation of the European Commission has been, in effect, proposing a consistent policy for IP in research and development (R&D). While there is a broad consensus on the overall goal – achieving a higher competitiveness of European industry in the international market place – there are, however, conflicting expectations on the micro‐management: are technology transfer agencies to be considered as profit‐centers, cost‐centers, mediators or all of the above? This paper seeks to provide an answer

Design/methodology/approach

The Physikalisch‐Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the national metrology institute of Germany with 1,900 employees and an annual budget of €145 million. It has established a micro‐management policy for IP rights, which is successfully fostering the development of modern instrumentation for metrology and may serve as an example for other public institutions as well. While it is obliged by law to operate as a regular market participant when licensing patents, there are additional conditions, some with the status of a law or a binding government decision as well.

Findings

The BSC approach, implemented at PTB, provides guidelines to reconcile seemingly conflicting requirements for a public entity while at the same time generating economic benefits in terms of additional income from licensing. In the authors' opinion this approach keeps costs at a reasonable level, fosters inventors' motivation and furnishes data for decisions for the technology transfer office as well as for the leadership of the institution.

Originality/value

To manage this conflict of goals the authors developed and implemented a balanced score card (BSC) system for IP management in order to optimize licensing income generation, cut costs, keep the inventor's motivation high and simultaneously realize macro‐economic technology transfer tasks. The BSC was originally introduced for the private sector by Norton and Kaplan in 1992, in response to a failure of purely monitoring financial indicators. The balanced score card considers economic and non‐economic factors, often denoted as “soft”. It is balanced with respect to result‐oriented indicators, like licensing income, and with respect to process‐oriented indicators, like the acceptance rate of inventions for patenting. And it tries to deduce from a trend of an indicator in the past a prediction of future development, associated with recommendations for actions to influence the ongoing process. The paper discusses the issues.

Keywords

Citation

Smandek, B., Barthel, A., Winkler, J. and Ulbig, P. (2010), "Balanced score card implementation for IP rights management in a public research institution", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 65-75. https://doi.org/10.1108/13683041011093767

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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