Partial benefit/cost in the evaluation of the Canadian Networks of Centresof Excellence

The Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program links research ers at many universities across the country to work on joint projects. Each individual network actively supports collaborative, networked research, wi th dozens or hundreds of researchers working in a common area. Each network also formally manages its research, technology transfer, networking, train ing, and so on. The impacts of the program's unique design on research, tra ining, and achieving socio-economic impacts were of great interest, resulti ng in a series of studies being undertaken to evaluate the program's succes s. One of the methods used to evaluate NCE was partial benefit/cost (B/C) a nalysis. Although there are often serious difficulties in using economic an alysis to review research programs, in the case of NCE it was very successf ul-NCE was found to have a small positive Net Present Value on the basis of the benefits from just nine 'big winner' projects. The results are conside red highly defensible and a number of lessons are drawn regarding how B/C c an be employed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.