The project examines how policies regarding commercialization of scientific knowledge shape university scientists' perceptions and practices of university-industry collaboration, focusing on comparing the US and Japanese experiences. It uses in-depth interview methods to delineate the interrelationship between culture, organizational networks, policy arrangements and scientific careers.
Intellectual Merit This research contributes to the literature on the sociology of science, university-firm collaboration, and science and technology policy in the United States and Japan. Studies of biotechnology usually use either a network level or a policy level analysis. Although these are important, research has not focused on the ways in which these factors, alongside others, come together to shape individual choices regarding commercialization. The project compares two socio-culturally different sites, and focuses on the work-pragmatics and careers of influential university scientists and their collaborations with industry. It sheds new light on the processes through which networks, culture, institutional arrangements and policy produce the striking and unexpected differences in commercialization practices between the US and Japan.
Broader Impact The study offers policy-makers a unique perspective into the ground-level management of university-firm collaborations in different cultural and institutional contexts. It provides new insights into the potential impacts of policy change on scientists who are increasingly important elements of the innovation system.
Project Outcome Report The project compares the US and Japanese biotechnology worlds and examines how policies regarding commercialization of scientific knowledge shape university scientists’ perceptions and practices of university-industry collaboration. Using in-depth interview methods, the project delineates the interrelationship between culture, organizational networks, policy arrangements and scientific careers. One focal point of the study is to understand why even after Japanese government implemented a series of policy changes to promote collaboration between university scientists and firms in late 1990s-2000s, Japanese science and technology policy failed to encourage scientific entrepreneurship in the same manner as the Bayh-Dole Act and series of institutional changes in the U.S. in 1980. Interview data from US and Japanese university scientists suggests that although they have similar policies that afford them to engage in commercial activities, their practices significantly differ, because of the historical understandings of the purpose of university, and former institutional and cultural arrangements in the two countries. Japanese science and technology policies originally emphasized "academic freedom," trying to undo the close military-industry-academia complex that was constructed prior to WWII. There was no formal structure that governs university-industry relationships, and the commercialization was managed largely informally, as "personal" relationships between a university scientists and a firm. Thus, even when the government decided to adopt the new U.S. inspired commercialization policy in the late 1990s, some Japanese scientists perceived the change as disruption of the previous – and functioning – ways of working with firms. Although the policy change was supposed to encourage university-industry collaboration by providing new, more formalized, ways for commercialization, Japanese scientists do not simply follow the new institutional order; instead, they deviate from new forms of collaboration when (1) old practices still provide them with familiar and effective ways to commercialize; (2) the shifting law and institutional changes allow them to choose from both old and new practices depending on circumstances, or; (3) their international ties to (mainly) American university professors and firms enable them to bypass Japanese policy restrictions. Concluding, the new science and technology policy in Japan did not necessarily enhance scientific entrepreneurship, despite the fact that it provides an equivalent – or better – policy conditions to the policy implemented in the United States, where scientific entrepreneurship abounds. The intellectual merit and broader of impacts This research deepens our understanding of how policy changes can have unexpected ramifications and consequences. Especially when the policy change is made in part due to external reasons – in this case, the desire to enhance commercialization of academic findings from universities to the level of the United States – and not for internal reasons (that would be that university scientists in Japan themselves initiating the change), the discrepancy between old cultural and institutional practices and the new policy can be so large that the policy actually could work in the opposite way than was intended. Empirically, it is the first comprehensive study of changing commercialization practices in Japan. Japan is extremely proactive in changing its science and technology policies, and since other Asian countries often implement similar policies as those implemented in Japan, understanding the Japanese case is extremely important for understanding the biotechnology field worldwide. Moreover, on a policy level, by understanding the effects of major policy changes, this study deepened out understanding of what other changes – both cultural and institutional – are necessary to enhance scientific entrepreneurship. Furthermore, this study will advance studies of science and technology policies, as the results can help generate generalizable hypotheses for studies regarding the effects of policy changes on university-firm collaboration.
