Title: University spillover before the national innovation system reform in Japan

Authors: Nobuya Fukugawa

Addresses: Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-11-804 Aramaki, Aoba-ku Sendai 980-8579, Japan

Abstract: This study examined whether and how university knowledge affected industrial R&D in the period when university-industry collaborations encountered institutional barriers in Japan. Estimation results of the regional knowledge production function using panel data (1983-1997) revealed that university research in a region positively affected valuable innovations in the region, measured by US patents filed by the Japanese firms, with a five-year lag. University-industry joint research did not act as a conduit of university spillover, which suggested that informal channels, such as voluntary transfer of academic inventions in return to donation, worked in the pre-reform period. Intermediaries as part of regional innovation policy, such as local public technology centres, increased valuable innovations not through intermediation of university-industry joint research, but through technology diffusion, such as technical consultation.

Keywords: intermediaries; national innovation systems; NIS reform; regional innovation systems; RIS; university spillover; universities; Japan; university knowledge; industrial R&D; research and development; university-industry collaboration; industrial cooperation; institutional barriers; university research; patents; local technology centres; technology diffusion; technical consultation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2017.083079

International Journal of Technology Management, 2017 Vol.73 No.4, pp.206 - 234

Received: 24 Apr 2015
Accepted: 17 Mar 2016
Published online: 20 Mar 2017 *

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