Method of Modelling Prices for R&D Products in the Case of their Transfer from Engineering Universities to the Business

Abstract

Global changes caused by the IV Industrial revolution and globalization processes resulted in a redistribution of roles of participants in innovative infrastructures of countries. Universities are leading both in terms of generating R&D products and in terms of developing business activities. Now there is a problem of insufficient methodological support of technological universities for pricing R&D products developed and prepared for transfer to the business environment. Existing methods and models do not meet the needs of the market, which is growing rapidly. At the same time, the market is characterized by a high degree of volatility. The purpose of the article is to develop a method for modelling prices for R&D products from universities to the business environment, which takes into account: the specifics of the R&D product, modern market features for this R&D product; the nature of the transfer and commercialization of this R&D product. The article identifies the factors that determine the processes of transfer, commercialization and market launch of R&D products, which affect the pricing of R&D products. Groups of characteristics that characterize systematize these factors: 1) consumer value of R&D product; 2) market susceptibility of R&D product; 3) transfer and commercialization processes of R&D product. Justified a number of factor attributes within the formed groups and assigned them the values of linguistic terms for adjusting the price of R&D product using fuzzy set theory algorithms. The method takes into account elements of cost, revenue and comparative estimation approaches. The method makes it possible to adjust prices for R&D products, taking into account heterogeneous features in the composition of R&D products and compare them with market analogues of R&D products. This contributes to achieving a higher level of pricing accuracy for R&D products when they are transferred from the university to the business environment. The resulting prices are compared with market prices for competitive analogues, which makes it possible to determine the scenario of transfer and commercialization of R&D product; justify the strategy of market development of R&D product; increase the level of manoeuvrability of pricing management for R&D product. The model was tested on a number of R&D products developed at Lviv Polytechnic National University (Ukraine). Application of the proposed method is advisable in the short-and medium-term forecasting period.