This award will support a collaborative research project between Maria Papadakis and Barry Bozeman of the Technology and Information Policy Program, Syracuse University, and Yukihiro Hirano, Director of the 1st Policy-Oriented Research Group, National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP), Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo, Japan. The project is the third stage of a multi-year project comparing the government R&D laboratory systems of the United States and Japan. The objective is to provide detailed data and information on the characteristics of the U.S. and Japanese government R&D laboratories with respect to their structure, outputs, research agendas and dynamics, inter- organizational relationships, and technology transfer among laboratories. It is expected that this research will provide practical, policy-relevant information on these two government R&D systems as well as pre-theoretic models on the role of government- performed R&D in national innovation systems. The first stage of the project, a study of U.S. R&D labs, has been completed. The second stage, which involves administering detailed questionnaires to Japanese laboratory personnel, is in progress. The third stage, which will begin with this award, involves in-depth semi-structured interviews of laboratory personnel and rigorous analytical comparison (statistical and qualitative) of the U.S. and Japanese responses. The investigators will publish their results for widespread dissemination.
