TY - JOUR T1 - Which Factors Influence a Company’s Evaluation of the Contribution of Basic Research to Innovation? JF - Technology Innovation Management Review Y1 - 2020 A1 - Hiromi S. Nagane A1 - Koichi Sumikura KW - Basic research KW - Biotech start-ups KW - innovation KW - Pharmaceutical companies KW - University and Public research institute AB - This paper empirically analyses how individuals in companies evaluate the contributions of basic research by universities and public research institutes to industry from multiple perspectives: manager as a spokesperson of the company (science-based industry or others), position within the company (managers or inventors), affiliations of inventors (large pharmaceutical companies or biotech start-ups), and educational background. This paper focuses on the case of Japan. Questionnaire surveys were sent to managers and inventors in established companies and start-ups across several industries. This study found that, 1) the more science-oriented the company, the higher their managers evaluate academic research, 2) inventors evaluate academic research more highly than managers, 3) inventors from biotech start-ups evaluate academic research more highly than inventors from large companies in the pharmaceutical industry, and 4) the more advanced their educational background, the more highly inventors evaluate academic research. This study suggests that 'closeness to science' is an important factor for companies to evaluate contributions of basic research to innovation. The findings also suggest that problems within the current educational system are an indirect cause of the innovation crisis in Japan. PB - Talent First Network CY - Ottawa VL - 10 UR - timreview.ca/article/1379 IS - 8 U1 - Chiba University Hiromi S. Nagane is Professor of Graduate School of Social Sciences at the Chiba University in Japan. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Hitotsubashi University. Her research interests are health economics, economics of innovation, science and technology policy, higher education policy, and industry-academia collaboration. She has published articles about health regulations, the relation between firms’ performance and absorptive capacity, the productivity of academic articles, leading scientists, and so on. She also received a category award for her article about science and technology policy from the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2020. She holds the post of visiting scholar of the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). U2 - National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) Koichi Sumikura is Deputy Director, GiST Program, GRIPS Professor. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo Graduate School for Engineering in 1998 and is now a visiting assistant at the University of Tokyo's Research Unit. His specialty is in intellectual property rights, bio-technology, and industry-academia collaboration. He is a visiting scholar of NISTEP. ER -