The evaluation of the national food technology programme: the articulation of the Spanish food innovation system

In this paper, we evaluate the National Food Technology Programme capacity to foster science-industry relationships. We define that capacity as the System's articulation. We apply a methodology which analyses external information to the Programme as well as the inputs and outputs yielded with it. Therefore, we obtain information on the actual performance of the Spanish Food Innovation System and on the use of the Programme's tools. We also show that the efficiency of the Programme depends, to a large extent, on the human resources' and the managerial structure's performance and on the support of the interface structures to the researchers. Finally, the results of the outputs evaluation show that the use of mean values, as is usual, is misleading when we analyse heterogeneous scientific communities.