Presentation Abstract

The decades of the 1980s and 90s witnessed the significant transformation of science and technology policy in most of the advanced countries. The one which largely took the initiative of this turning point, it is needless to say, the United States of America. The 1980's enactment of Bayh-Dole Act and other pro-patent legislations followed by it, the reformation of intellectual property system, the theoretical development of the national innovation system, nurturing university startups and so on. These are well-known policies that have made it possible for the US to recover from its 80s' economic sluggishness. In striking contrast, deciding at length in the late 90s to follow America's actions, Japan's policy mixtures have seemingly not produced the expected outcomes. In this seminar, seeing a cause of this failure in unbridgeable gap between two Japanese policies of higher education and science and technology, I am going to review America's historical experience of inextricably linking these two knowledge-based policies. In so doing, I would like to spotlight the ways in which research universities are integrated as an important part of America's national strategy and have been expected to play "independent actors" of national policy initiatives.