Literature review: Impact assessment of research and technology organizations

Due to their ability to bridge the gap between knowledge created by basic research and market requirements, Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) play a major role in countries' innovation systems. Their R&D results should lead to innovations, which in turn generate the economic output of public investment in research and development. Moreover, they should support the foundation of new companies and industrial innovations. Given the continuing pressures of growing challenges, such as the digital transformation with its significant impact on organizations of all sectors, the changing behavior of customers and the rise of new business models, there is a higher demand for evaluating the actual contribution of RTOs in national innovation systems. It becomes essential for policy makers to gain a transparent insight into relevant and comprehensive performance metrics showing the impact of RTOs from a micro- and macroeconomic perspective. This is complemented by the increase of interest and funding in research and innovation in both public and private sectors. Governments and other clients seek to determine the value of their investments in applied R&D. Simply stating assumptions of achieving a positive impact is not enough anymore, RTOs must provide robust evidence that this impact is actually being accomplished by their research and innovation activities. Yet, the definition of impact and its operationalization in specific performance indicators seem to differ across literature. Against this background, this contribution aims to review impact assessment studies to address the challenge of a missing standard of impact assessment methods for RTOs. Therefore, existing impact studies of RTOs are to be analyzed and compared according to their overall approaches, frameworks and metrics. Therewith, possible limitations among the different assessment strands will be identified. Moreover, further methodological development possibilities for the impact assessment of RTOs will be discussed.