National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) has annually conducted the Survey on Research Activities of Private Corporations in Japan since FY1968. The FY2011 survey mainly focuses on the following six topics; (i) the trend of R&D expenses and staffs, (ii) patenting activities (including the management of trade secret), (iii) innovation process (from the viewpoint of the introduction of new products or services and their profit performance), (iv) internationalization of R&D activities, (v) the impact of M&A on the R&D activities, and (vi) the use of R&D investment tax credit system. The 1,263 corporations, out of 3,443 objects, responded to the survey.
As the result, both the input and output of R&D activities, R&D expenses/staffs and patent applications, showed a downward trend. About 28 % of the respondents introduced new products or services with technological novelty, and about 22 % developed new production methods.
As for the internationalization of R&D activities, the percentage of the respondents having overseas R&D facility was 13 %, a small increase from last year. We found that the M&As between other corporations, regardless of their types, significantly affected the corporations’ R&D activities such as a development of new technologies. Finally, concerning R&D investment tax credit system, just 3.4 % of the respondents had an experience of using the system. We found that, while the satisfactions of the users were relatively high, about the half of the respondents that are eligible to use the system were unable to do so due to the institutional constraints and more than one thirds of them did not even know the existence of the system.
