Efficiency, Effectiveness and Impact of Research and Innovation: A Framework for the Analysis

Introduction, motivation and policy relevance The main objective of this paper is to provide a framework for the assessment of the research activity and its impacts. This is a difficult task. First of all, because of the heterogeneity, partial overlapping and fragmentation of the different streams of literature. Secondly, due to the need of applying a systemic approach to account for the complexity of the research activity and its complementarities and interrelationships with teaching, third mission activities and other relevant dimensions of performance, including the inputs. This work originated from Daraio (2015) which pointed out the unavailability of a best evidence on the “efficiency, effectiveness and impact of research and innovation” due to the lack of a suitable framework for a comprehensive analysis. Two recent policy initiatives witness the need and call for the proposal of a general framework for assessing research and its impact. We refer to the STAR metrics in US and to the EC (2014) “Expert Group to support the development of tailor-made impact assessment methodologies for ERA” in Europe. We discuss in the following the main dimensions of our framework which are: 1. Theory, 2. Methods, 3. Data.