ORIC — Pakistan's Nationally Mandated University Research, Innovation & Commercialization Offices

Pakistan's Higher Education Commission (HEC) began requiring universities to establish Offices of Research, Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC) in the early 2010s, giving every accredited public and private higher-education institution a single unit responsible for research support, intellectual property, industry linkage and commercialisation of research outputs. By the FY2024–25 evaluation cycle, HEC had notified 71 ORICs nationwide.
HEC scores every ORIC annually against a formal self-assessment scorecard covering human resources, research support, commercialisation and sustainability, and sorts offices into performance bands — in the FY2024–25 report, 7 offices reached the top 'W' band, 38 sat in 'X', 43 in 'Y' and 7 were rated underperforming. Universities reported 197 national and international licensing agreements in FY2022–23, and HEC has paired the scorecard with a dedicated online portal (rfi.hec.gov.pk) and a 'Triple Helix' industry-academia-government linkage initiative.
Independent academic assessment is more mixed: a peer-reviewed study of public-sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa concluded that ORIC there had 'not been effective in achieving its core purpose,' citing geographic distance from industry, thin research infrastructure funding and weak faculty training in commercialisation as recurring barriers. The scorecard system itself — with its underperforming-band category — implicitly confirms that results vary widely by institution rather than being uniformly strong.

Read the full analysis: https://www.hec.gov.pk/english/services/universities/ORICs/Pages/default.aspx