Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2011 19 Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. R&D networks: an evaluation framework Alessandro Sala* Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, Milano 20133, Italy Fax: +39-02-6696-945 E-mail: alessandro.sala@polimi.it *Corresponding author Paolo Landoni and Roberto Verganti Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, Milano 20133, Italy Fax: +39-02-2399-2720 E-mail: paolo.landoni@polimi.it E-mail: Roberto.verganti@polimi.it Abstract: R&D networks have been studied and promoted by scholars and policy makers as a way to increase the performance of innovation systems. At the same time, limited attention has been devoted to evaluate their performances. This paper reviews the literature that studied R&D networks from different approaches and suggests a framework to help developing evaluation systems for R&D networks. The framework is based on a network model that highlights the main elements and characteristics of an R&D network, underlines the opportunity of three different perspectives of evaluation and has been applied and tested on three case studies. Keywords: research network; research evaluation; technology transfer; network model; indicators; network performance. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Sala, A., Landoni, P. and Verganti, R. (2011) ‘R&D networks: an evaluation framework’, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp.19–43. Biographical notes: Alessandro Sala is a Contract Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, where he teaches the course General Management. He obtained his PhD in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering from the same university and he has been a visiting scholar at the Science and Technology Policy Research (SPRU) Centre of the University of Sussex. His main areas of interest are regional innovation system, regional competitiveness and research evaluation from a policy perspective, and he acts as Consultant for the Lombardy Regional Institute for Research. Paolo Landoni is an Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, where he teaches the course General Management. He received his PhD in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering from the same university and he has