THE SASAKAWA PEACE FOUNDATION

Comparative Study of Mechanisms and Incentives for University-Business Interactions in Four Developed Countries

24,800,000 yen [Grant Project]
The Council for Industry and Higher Education (UK)

University-business interactions of today is based on a simplified U.S. model where an invention originated in a university is patented with a license (or licenses) given to the industry. Japan also stands on this model. Nonetheless, the relationship between universities, predominantly public institutions by nature, and market mechanism-driven industry is complicated as it is affected by multitudes of factors such as industry-specific characteristics, the nature of research project (basic, applied or otherwise), legal structure of countries they are based, let alone historical and cultural backgrounds. The understanding of such mechanism is far from being sufficient.
This project attempts to contribute to designing of a new system of university-business collaborations by elucidating this complex and diverse mechanism. To this end, case studies of university-industry integrations extracted from four developed countries including Japan, the U.S., the U.K. and Canada will be analyzed country by country, with an international comparative analysis carried out simultaneously.

The following activities are planned in the first year of the project.

A four-country study team is organized with participation of Japanese, American, British as well as Canadian members to formulate a common framework for analysis of university-industry interaction processes in respective country.
Based on the common analytical framework, for each target country the team carries out:
(1) Extraction of 20 success cases of industry-academia collaboration from each country;
(2) Data collection for each of chosen cases and interviews with people representing universities and the industry. Mechanisms of collaboration are to be analyzed from the perspectives of the nature of research projects, mode of knowledge transfer, negotiation process in-between universities and the industry;
(3) Drafting of a report for each country on the basis of case analyses achieved.

(First year of a 2-year project)