There is a need for research regarding how to manage public research and development (R&D) to create societal values. The paper focuses on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in a case study, the microelectronics research center. Twenty-four factors (e.g. mission, internal R&D, collaboration and management-related factors) were constructed in a hierarchy model for assessing three innovation plans: knowledge, societal and commercial orientation. The AHP analysis reveals that commercial orientation has the highest impact score on innovation factors. However, given that the selected case study is a taxpayer-funded public R&D organisation, societal expectations have to be factored into their innovation plans. Hence, the paper provides a sensitivity analysis as a result of which a suggestion is made to increase the priority of collaboration-related factors to improve the impact of societal orientation.