Abstract

This paper focuses on innovation policy entitled “The Knowledge Cluster Initiative” implemented by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) in Japan. The Initiative began in 2002 and designated areas were added in 2003 and in 2004. By 2004, it included 18 regions for the University-Business-Government (UBG) alliances, for which 2.5 billion yen was granted in each region. As the Initiative included detailed assessment programs, it enabled assessing the performance over the first five-year round. The author visited all of these areas to interview coordinators, university professors and researchers, managers for startup ventures, and researchers at participating companies. Participants were required to form consortia to promote industry-based research. In this paper, the author examines policy implications from the Initiative. The Japanese innovation policy depended on UBG alliances, but it may well be sophisticated by focusing on University-Business alliances. Although the coordinators in the Initiative have actively connected participants to maintain cluster performance, they were employed by organizations in the public sector. If coordinators are directly employed by the universities, they can play agile roles in linking the participants in University-Business collaborations. The coordinators can be trained among university staffs whereby officers in the universities can support academic productivity as well as new startups based on the UBG alliances.