Ranking of the best Brazilian universities and professors in information & communication technology: A methodology for a R&D Lab of a multinational company in Brazilian Consumer electronics´ industry

The objective of this paper is to present the methodology used for identifying the best Brazilian universities and professors in research topics of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector. This analysis was part of the R&D Lab planning activities in order to establish cooperative research projects with local universities. The motivation arises from the fact that Brazilian research environment is not enough mapped/studied, especially for applications related to the company´s demands. The country has just started to provide competitive differentiation in R&D activities and most universities are more concerned with teaching/researching than working with Industry. The theoretical framework used is the innovation network management focused on the search for external partnership and the analysis of main universities ranking methodologies and bibliometrics indicators. Briefly, the methodology created can be separated into two phases: Identification of top universities; and identification of top professors and research areas on ICT. From 10 universities and 150 professors it was analyzed papers and thesis (Master/Doctorate) since 2009, summing up almost 4.000 documents. The result provided a Brazilian research map on ICT sector and it can be used to start establishing partnerships with universities.