A Research On Japan University Spin-off Companies In Regional Innovation Perspective

In the new ecomomic era characterized by informationization, networking and globalization, the life cycle of technology and product becomes much shorter. Compared with the traditional resource factors, the efficiency and directions of scientific and technical knowledge flows has a growing impact on the regional economy. Knowledge diffusion efficiency and knowledge application capacity becomes an important indicator which measures the regional innovation capacity. As a result, the university spin-offs companies (USOs), which is the combination of knowledge diffusion and knowledge application, has been favored by regional policy maker in recent years. In early years, many developed countries recognized that USOs play a positive role in regional economy development, and enacted many kinds of policies to promote technology transfer between universities and enterprise. After US "Bayh-Dole Act" in 1980, developed countries pay more and more policy attention and policy tilt to USOs. Under such a macro background, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to make a research on USOs.The development of USOs can not exist without regions, since which is the embodiment of innovation regionalization by itself. Therefore, to study USOs from regional innovation perspective is really important in the knowledge economy condition. The dissertation chooses USOs of Japan as studied object. The author summarizes the principle course models of USOs by trying to open out the inner relation between USOs which is a phenomenon of economic geography and region innovation. Then, the dissertation gives some advices on how to improve USOs in our own country.There are three parts in this paper, which consist of 9 chapters. The first part is theory basis, which includes three chapters. The first chapter introduces the background for selecting this subject, the studying methods, the literatures in the outside countries and the inside, and the special characters of the dissertation. The second chapter mainly study related theories of regional innovation. On the basis of this, the third chapter puts the USOs into the regional innovation system, and analyses its formation conditions, formation process and formation mechanism. The paper concludes that the USOs are the result of evolution of university function and knowledge-based economy era; the promotion of university primary technology industrialization is the essential driving force, compared to the traditional market demand-pull mode, the university spin-off enterprise belongs to the technology-push mode; USOs are an important node of regional innovation system.The second part put emphasis on the study of USOs in Japan. There are all four parts in this part, which research USOs in the macro level, the mecro level and the micro level. On the macro level, the paper focuses on the development environment for USOs. And the author finds that the development of USOs is conditioned by regional innovation environment. As a principal part of regional innovation system, government can formulate a reasonable framework for the system to mold regional innovation environment, and then play a leading role in the development of university spin-off companies. This leading role is the concentrated expression of Japanese government's reform on university of intellectual property management and university technology transfer system through legislation, which establish the basis for the modern enterprise system mode of Japanese USOs. In the mecro level, the paper focuses on the spatial distribution of USOs in Japan. Based on the description of the characters of the distribution, the factors influencing distribution are suggested by using the unary linear regression method. There are two influencing factors. One represents the source of bright people and technology of USOs, the other expresses the level of the regional environment for technology transfer of universities. Microscopic study discussed the level of mutual promotion between academic spin-off companies and the other principal parts of regional creative system. It is suggested that in Japan the mutual relation are weak, and whether the USOs could develop by both quantity and quality from only by quantity depended on the improvement of level of the mutual promotion among the main parts of regional creative networks.The third part summarizes the experiences of USOs in Japan and gives some inspiring advices to China, In recent years, going with the world stream, our government has adopted a series of promotion measures on transferring academic results into real production. But in reality they were not very effective. Compare with the ones in Japan, academic spin-off companies in China were longer, but many problems which focused on the operation mode of USOs still existed. The author think the radical way to solve the problems in China is that we have to refer the experience of USOs in Japan and take some measures from both knowledge property rights and university technology transference.