Like living beings, all organizations evolve; nevertheless, in the case of complex organizations, their evolutions aren’t natural and must be directed through a strategic management permanent process. The managed evolution determines their strength and competence areas. Understanding the relation between strength and competence areas in complex organizations as the research and development (R&D) institutes and centers, is highly relevant since it requires the system understanding including constitutive elements, actuation areas, and internal and external interrelations. R&D organizations are complex because in them multiple knowledge areas are cultivated and the actuating organizational variables are innumerable. In this paper a method to identify the competence areas of an R&D Mexican university center, is presented. The method is based in the analysis of the organization´s evolution and the financed projects-products maps.