Determinant factors of innovation in Japan's chemical industry: Analysis of its technological opportunities

The purpose of this research is to clarify the determinant factors of technological innovation in the chemical industry of Japan. This paper examines the results of analysis on "technological opportunity" from among factors that determine technological innovations. Technological opportunity links research and development conducted by firms to the creation of a new technical knowledge. Technological opportunity is provided by a variety of information sources that surround research and development. Furthermore, technological opportunity is considered to be something captured by the affluent, since opportunity to come into contact with various information sources increase as the firm size becomes larger. Consequently, we analyzed the capturing status of technological opportunity in terms of size and information sources, based on data obtained from a questionnaire survey conducted on firms that belong to the petrochemical industry. As a result, we observed a clear advantage for firms on a larger size, in regards to the capturing of technological opportunity from scientific information sources, such as universities. We then analyzed the implementation status of joint research and development, which is one of the methods used to capture technological opportunity from universities. From this we clarified that the main inhibiting factor of implementation was the mismatch of firms and universities in the domain of research and development.