A Hybrid Fuzzy Model To The Ranking Problem of Companies Operating R&D Activities in Technology Innovation Centers

Abstract

Technology innovation centers where universities share information with industry collaborations and institutions and have a wide range of companies in its field. Developing technology and competition have forced to make innovations, the companies in technology innovation centers operating Research and Development (R&D) activities have tried to prove themselves by proposing different projects to industrial organizations and making innovations and they are still working since they may get some promotions from the government. A decision for ranking companies has a number of criteria, which range from financial incentives and infrastructure to R&D activities. Most of the criteria are based on linguistic terms that decision makers can express with fuzzy statements. For this reason, in this study, the problem for ranking the companies operating R&D activities is solved by using a hybrid model, combining the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy TOPSIS methods. Four different main decision criteria, 16 sub-criteria and three random companies were considered for this study. A network was formed, and surveys were carried out with the opinions of the experts on R&D activities and including experts from some technology development zones of Turkey. The proposed hybrid model was applied successfully to a case study for the ranking the companies operating R&D activities in Çukurova University Technology Development Zone in Turkey. Using actual data, it is showed the applicability of the proposed approach and compare the best alternative obtained by the proposed method for three companies in Çukurova University Technology Development Zone in Turkey.