University spillover before the national innovation system reform in Japan

This study examined whether and how university knowledge affected industrial R&D in the period when university-industry collaborations encountered institutional barriers in Japan. Estimation results of the regional knowledge production function using panel data (1983-1997) revealed that university research in a region positively affected valuable innovations in the region, measured by US patents filed by the Japanese firms, with a five-year lag. University-industry joint research did not act as a conduit of university spillover, which suggested that informal channels, such as voluntary transfer of academic inventions in return to donation, worked in the pre-reform period. Intermediaries as part of regional innovation policy, such as local public technology centres, increased valuable innovations not through intermediation of university-industry joint research, but through technology diffusion, such as technical consultation.