An investigation to R&D project selection problem with AHP method: An application to publi̇c sponsored tecnolojical product investment program

Todays, the future of the countries has been so closely associated with their scientific, technological and industrial development. Progress in science and technology, and producing new products and systems is only possible with the R & D studies. States provide financial support to private sector's R&D projects for the R&D activities becoming regular and systematic. Accordingly, public authorities come across a decision making problem while they selecting R&D projects eligible for public funding. In order to use public funds efficiently and coordinate these funding mechanisms in line with science and technology policy, public authorities need to perform R&D project selection process ideally. This thesis study aims to examine evaluation criteria of government sponsored private sector R&D project selection problem, to build a network identifing interactions between these evaluation criterias and to assess to what extent these criterias are important in selection process. Within this framework, R&D project selection process of Technological Product Investment Support Program coordinated by Science, Industry and Technology Ministry is analyzed. Public sponsored private sector R&D project selection problem studied in this thesis is modelled with a multi attribute decision making method- analytic hierarchy process- and weights of the evaluation criteria are obtained with this model. KEYWORDS: Analytic Hierarchy Process, R&D Project Selection Problem, Public R&D Support