NISTEP expert survey on Japanese S&T and innovations system (NISTEP TEITEN survey)
aims to track the status of S&T and innovation system in Japan through the survey to Japanes e
experts and researchers in universities, public research institutions, and private firms. The
survey revealed the experts’ increasing concern to the current status of Japanese universities,
such as the shortage of young scholars; decreasing trends of time for research; decreasing of
block fund of national universities; and slow advancement of internationalization. The status
varies across the field of science and technology and the size of universities . In addition to this,
bibliometric studies of scientific publication show decreasing of presence of Japan in scientific
publications in the world.
The workshop on the TEITEN survey was held in order to understand how the issues found in
the TEITEN survey are interrelated and to discuss what kind of measures should be taken to
raise the position of Japan in scientific publications. This report records discussions in the
workshop and summarizes messages gotten from the workshop.
Archive for 7月, 2013
In this paper, we investigate differences in innovation activities between firms with international
activities and firms without such activities, utilizing the firm-level data underlying the Japanese
National Innovation Surveys for 2003 and 2009. We quantitatively examine the factors which account
for differences in innovation output depending on the mode of international activities, employing the
innovation accounting framework proposed by Mairesse and Mohnen (2001, 2002) and Mohnen,
Mairesse, and Dagenais (2006).
We find that internationally engaged firms use more innovation inputs and generate more innovation
output. In particular, firms with R&D establishments abroad show the best innovation performance,
followed, in that order, by firms with both sales and production establishments abroad, firms with
overseas sales only, and firms with production establishments abroad only. We further find that a
significant part of the higher innovation performance of firms with international activities can be
explained by their greater intra-group or intra-firm knowledge spillovers, R&D intensity, perceived
competitive pressure, and proximity to basic research. However, more importantly, firms with
international activities are much more efficient in innovation when measuring innovation output in
terms of the sales turnover of innovative products. Although engagement in international activities
itself does not raise the probability that a firm successfully develops a new product or process, it
greatly increases the sales amount of innovative products.
On May 21, 2012, an annular solar eclipse, a very rare celestial phenomenon, was observed across Japan.
We conducted web surveys in June 2012, August 2012, and December 2012 to figure out the effects of this annular solar eclipse on public awareness of science and technology in Japan.
Our results suggest that the general public showed increasing interest in space and celestial bodies, and that children are highly interested in science.
Shinya Yamanaka, a stem cell biologist at Kyoto University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on October 8, 2012, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
We conducted web surveys in November 2012, January 2013, and March 2013 to figure out the effects of the Nobel Prize win by Japanese scientists on public awareness of science and technology in Japan.
Our results suggest that women, in particular, showed increasing interest in the topics of the science and technology. Furthermore, children showed growing interest in research-oriented jobs.
This report summarizes the results of Japan’s first large-scale survey (responses from 743 university and 704 corporate researchers, covering patent applications from 2004 to 2007) of co-inventors from national universities and corporations engaged in university-industry collaborative research projects. The report comprises the following chapters: survey overview; survey respondent attributes; project formation and basic structure; motivations and opportunities of project creation; project management; project inputs (personnel and funding); and project results and spillover effects, etc. The study obtained the following basic important findings:
1) university-industry collaborative project as bridge builders;
2) needs and sources of seeds for university-industry partnerships;
3)diversity in research sources utilized in project;
4) the importance of domestic sources of knowledge in the project and the importance of university-industry partnership toward domestic industry;
5) characteristics of researchers participating in university-industry collaborative project;
6) characteristics of application for university-industry co-inventions;
7) university-industry partner matching;
8) management integration in university-industry collaborative project;
9) project inputs (personnel and funding);
10) relationship between sources of funding for pre-research and university-industry collaborative project;
11) university-industry collaborative project results and commercialization;
12) results in improving research capabilities in university-industry collaborative project and frequency of follow-up research;
13) achievement level of initial goals through project execution.
