Abstract
The Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, acting as the R&D center for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) employed in the fiscal 1999 a rating method on an experimental basis in the evaluation process of the 39 R&D projects conducted by the Industrial Technology Council's Evaluation Committee. The method involved five to over ten evaluators for each project who ranked the corresponding project by a rating from 1 to 5. The results suggested program revisions or detailed scrutiny in planning for the subsequent period for those projects gained ratings lower than m - σ (m is the average rating and σ the standard deviation). It also indicated a tendency for R&D fostering germinal technologies to have inappropriate targets, planning and management which obscures the prospect of the projects. These conclusions show clearly the importance of defining project targets in terms of commercial potentiality at the earliest stage of the planning. Evaluators with backgrounds of the field where the project is executed tended to give higher ratings to the project in question than non-specialists including those representing potential users of the technology. The discrepancy was more marked in appreciation of the R&D outcome and its commercial value as well as spillover effects.
