How to Measure Triple Helix Performance? A Fresh Approach

Global and local success of a country is largely dependent on the level of collaboration between the three main pillars: Government, Industry, and Academia. Successful management of this collaboration requires development and observation of performance measures. In the past few years, a steep rise of interest in composite indices is detected. They measure different aspects of national performance: innovativeness, entrepreneurial activities, sustainability, etc. Approaches to measuring the Triple Helix synergy have been introduced before. In particular, applications of Shannon’s equation grasped the attention of various researches. Still, a single measure for comparing countries has yet to be introduced. This paper aims at establishing the performance measure of industry-university-government relations. As a case study, OECD countries are compared based on the indicators from the official OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators, classified according to the Triple Helix actors. The authors apply the two-step Composite I-distance method for creating composite measures of multivariate problems. The results imply that it is possible to measure the Triple Helix performance at the national level. These measures provide valuable data for more effective management within and among main Triple Helix actors. The policy-makers may use the results to determine further development directions and corrective measures.