Knowledge flow from scientific sector to private firms: Review on the policy of technology transfers in Japan

Expectations for cooperation between industry and the academic sector, as a means for recovering their industrial competitiveness, have been heightened in Japan since the latter half of the 1990s. Recognition in the 1980s showed the policy of technology transfer from universities to private enterprises was actively implemented in the United States and proved to be fruitful, to a certain extent, in contributing toward the economic growth of the country. This, as well as an orientation for taking this example as a model for Japan's own purposes, is in the background of such debate over the policy. However, any operation relating to the redefining of the reality recognized as a prerequisite for the policy is already a non-issue. This is to say that the perception of expectations that are in the background for cooperation between industry and the academic sector, which is driven with the TLO as the axis, shows that "the flow of knowledge from universities to the industrial sector was much less in Japan in comparison with countries like the United States" or that "the flow of knowledge through the transfer of intellectual property from universities can promote innovation in the industrial sector" are considered to be stylized facts hardly ever verified through experience. This paper presents an attempt to contribute towards offering evidence based on debates over policies by investigating the stylized facts with experiential data. The results of our analysis indicated that the flow of knowledge from the scientific sector to private firms in Japan was not necessarily less than that of the United States. Further, it was also indicated that enterprises in Japan utilized the domestic scientific sector and not scientific sectors overseas, as useful sources of information for innovations. Furthermore, the results of the analysis for industries made it apparent that the importance of intellectual property as a medium of knowledge flow from universities to private enterprises was limited in nature in Japan. (c) 2006 PICMET.