Knowledge management and value creation in public research centers: The development of a diagnosis tool

The R&D Centers (RDC) are organizations where knowledge and innovation management has a high priority for increasing efficiency of knowledge and creativity processes and their transformation in intellectual assets. At present, these capacities are essential for competitiveness environment where customers demand new and better products and services. In LATAM countries, the public policies stimulate researchers according to a traditional schema mainly based on number of publications and graduated students. So, knowledge management and value creation are not common RDC evaluation. According to this premise, our R&D team has developed an evaluation tool that has been applied to fourteen Mexican RDC, ten Brazilians and ten Chileans. The RDC selected have an acceptable relationship with productive sector and important contributions to science and technology in the region. The objective of the research was the evaluation of knowledge and value creation management (KVCM) in public RDC and the identification of social and economic impact of these elements. Our findings present best practices of KVCM around the results of nine strategic areas. This project is sponsored by IDRC and FLACSO Mexico.