Policy and practice in Japan: an empirical study on university-industry collaboration

Abstract

The enormous and constantly growing potential of technology innovations have promoted governments around the world to actively explore the best way and means to realize its economic and social benefits. One of the key approaches is the establishment and practices of science and technology (S&T) policy on collaborative R&D among industry, academic and government sectors. Similarly, collaborative R&D among researchers in Japanese universities, industries and government labs are increasingly advocated recently in the global competitive market place. Various policies/systems have been established and enforced so far by MONBUSHO (The Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japanese government) aiming at promoting economic and technological progress through collaborations at the nationwide scale. Among these government-led efforts, "The Joint Research with the Private Sector System" was mostly widely accepted by both industries and universities, and more than 8700 projects were enforced during 1983-1994. The richness of the empirical data provides base to explore the complete examinations to nowadays university-industry innovation network in Japan. While these systems have been enforced for more than a decade, it is valuable to examine and assess their impacts on the nation's innovations. The study aimed at identifying the key features of recent complex university-industry web, and describing the network on relational dimensions. The results disclose the changes and structure of the network, and points out the structural outcomes seem to have qualitative changes, beyond on-going Japanese S&T policy framework. Moreover, the results will provide some new observations for debates and discussions on this emerging dimension to policy makers in Japan and abroad.