At NIAB, a UK based company that provides research, services and information to theagricultural and food sector, a system has been designed that helps to assess and manage thegrowing research programme of the company. Since the company was `privatised' four yearsago, research activities have increased and moved away from solely applied research to a mixof applied and more fundamental research. Being a key element of the new developedcompany strategy, research now plays an increasing important role in broadening the scopeof the company and keeping current services competitive by driving innovation. All researchat NIAB is externally funded. In this paper we report on the process to design NIAB'sperformance measurement system, for which the Performance measurement system System-atic Design Approach was used. The design process was started with an elaborate structuredproblem analysis of the research process and its inter and extra-organisational context. Basedupon this analysis, firstly a conceptual and secondly a detail design of a performancemeasurement system was made. To maximise the leverage from research, the system has beendesigned to optimise the value delivered to the funder as well as the value delivered tointernal customers in the form of knowledge that drives innovation.