Partner Evaluation Scorecard

For TTO directors and corporate scouting teams: screens, scores, and ranks candidate partners on eight weighted criteria and prints a Decision Memo for the selection committee.

What it does

Research partners are often chosen on reputation, a couple of good meetings and whoever made the strongest case in the room. When the choice is wrong, you often find out only after the budget and goodwill are committed. The Partner Evaluation Scorecard gives your team a fair, documented way to compare up to four candidate partners, universities or companies, before anyone signs a term sheet.

It works like a funnel. A short must-pass screen first removes any candidate with a deal-breaker, such as an open dispute with a past research partner, an export-control problem, or publication terms you can't accept. Your team then scores the remaining candidates on eight criteria drawn from research on how organizations choose alliance partners, from strategic fit and technical capability to cultural fit and risk. A scoring guide spells out what weak, adequate and strong look like for each criterion, so every reviewer scores the same way, and the workbook asks for the evidence behind each score. You can weight the criteria for your sector or set the weights yourself. Candidates that pass the screen and score at least adequate then go through a structured due-diligence check.

The result is a two-page Decision Memo your selection committee can act on: a ranked shortlist, each candidate's weak spots, and a test of whether the ranking still holds if your priorities shift. Your choice rests on evidence, and you can show anyone who asks why you picked the partner you did.

Who it's for

TTO and sponsored programs directors choosing industrial partners, and corporate scouting teams weighing candidate universities.

What's inside, sheet by sheet

• Cover and Instructions: a quick start that takes you from naming your candidates to printing the memo, with plain guidance on each step.
• Scoring Guide: for each of the eight criteria, a plain description of weak, adequate, and strong, with suggestions on where to find the evidence for a university and for a company. The same guidance appears on screen as you score.
• Tier 1, Initial Screen: six must-pass checks for each candidate, with space to note the evidence, reviewer and date. The workbook tells you which candidates go forward.
• Tier 2, Weighted Scoring: where your team scores each candidate and records the evidence. Choose a weighting suited to your sector, from eight sector options and a general default, or enter your own. The workbook calculates each candidate's overall score and recommendation, and points out any score entered without evidence.
• Tier 3, Due Diligence: a structured check of the candidates still in the running across five areas, including IP position, financial stability, and regulatory risk.
• Decision Memo: the pages for your committee. Ranks the candidates, names each one's weakest areas, shows whether the ranking holds up under different weightings, and charts what drives each candidate's score.
• Evaluation History, Audit and Illustrative Reference: a log of past selection rounds and a log where reviewers record each change and why. Each candidate's score is placed against an illustrative reference range at first; once you've logged enough past candidates, it's compared with your own history instead.
• Methodology, License and About, and Sample: the research behind each criterion, and a fully worked example so you can see the finished result before you start.

What you need to use it

Excel or a compatible spreadsheet app, and enough knowledge of each candidate to score it, with evidence from patent databases, filings, publications and references. For each candidate you record the screening checks, a score and a line of evidence for each criterion, and, for those that go forward, the due-diligence findings.

The methodology and the sources it cites

The eight criteria build on three bodies of research: the complementarity, compatibility and commitment criteria for choosing a partner (Kale and Singh, 2009), the success factors for university-industry agreements (Mora-Valentín et al., 2004), and Geringer's (1991) distinction between task-related and partner-related criteria. Shah and Swaminathan (2008), Mowery, Oxley and Silverman (1996), Dyer, Kale and Singh (2004), Bruneel et al. (2010), Gulati (1995), Barney (1991), Beamish (1987), Hemmert et al. (2014), Pertuzé et al. (2010), Ariño and Doz (2000) and Gulati, Sytch and Mehrotra (2008) anchor single criteria. The sector weights and the decision thresholds are Helikon Labs practitioner judgment, documented on the Methodology sheet; the Custom preset lets you replace them.

Where it sits in the Helikon Method

Match phase (partner and technology selection), built from The Helikon Method, The Art and Science of Partner Matching, for use between long candidate list and term sheet.

Related workshop and bundle

Our Partner Discovery and Selection workshop includes this scorecard, which leads our Partner Selection Bundle and is part of our Assessment Suite, rolling out in batches as tools go live.

License

Single-organization internal-use license: your organization may use it internally without seat limits, and may not resell or redistribute it.