The Japan Revitalization Strategy compiled by the government in June of last year places the medical and healthcare industries including the medical device industry, which contribute to extending health and longevity of people, as important strategic industries, and proposes a strategy to actively promote the growth of those industries.
In line with this basic policy strategy of the government, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is actively promoting the following:
● Development of medical devices through medical-engineering collaborations; ● Development of the world's most advanced medical devices; ● Establishment of a business and regulatory environment to promote development and marketing of medical devices; and ● Capture of growing overseas medical device markets.

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The health-care industry attracts much attention because of its high growth rate. On the other hand, its entry barrier is thought to be higher than those of other industries, since the health-care industry is under the business surroundings, like regulations such as the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law, which differ from other industries. However, there have been quite a few companies which succeeded in the new entry into the health-care industry by industry-academia cooperation.
Therefore, in the JSIP Symposium in Fiscal Year of 2013, an administrative official of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry gave a keynote speech, followed by illustrative talks of speakers working for big or small and medium sized companies which accomplished a new entry into the health-care industry to make a business by using industry-academia cooperation. Then, a panel discussion was carried out to investigate conditions, know-how and challenges of the entry.

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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are important actors in cooperative research in the provinces. However, SMEs lack resources (e.g., human resources, know-how or informational sources). Furthermore, SMEs are facing some difficulties when they join in cooperative research with academia and the government. However, the proper operation of local support systems can help them. This paper focuses on the regional differences in the utilization of a research fund called "Chiiki needs sokuou gata (research fund for local needs)" that was provided for SMEs by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The author believes variations in regional support resources and activities caused such differences. A correlation analysis and a multivariable linear analysis were used to examine factors of these differences. The results showed that the following factors influenced the utilization of research funds for SMEs.
1) Increasing the number of researchers in a region.
2) Improving the system for receiving external funds at regional support organization.
3) Support from the regional office of funding agencies.

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TLO, which stands for Technology Licensing Organization, is one of organizations to support the industry-university-government cooperation in our country. There have been some studies which describe the actual situations of TLO. However, the number of studies to mention practical business affairs of TLO for which the profit or loss has been published is few. In addition, these studies are not enough for practical businesspeople to refer.
Therefore, in this study the actual activities are reported for CAMPUS CREATE Co., Ltd. which is TLO for the University of Electro-Communications in order to clarify the characterizations of the TLO. CAMPUS CREATE Co., Ltd. has been managed by the author to result in a profit. The activities of CAMPUS CREATE Co., Ltd. are characterized by various businesses, management based on ISO9001, business model with emphasis on consultant and three-person joint research contracts among the TLO, the university and a company.

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A change of the number of patent applications is investigated in order to estimate activity of research and development of companies in each prefecture. The number of patent applications in most prefectures tends to decrease through these thirteen years (2000-2012). Most prefectures of North Tohoku, San-in, Shikoku and Kyushu district have smaller number of the patent applications. The Universities located in these prefectures have smaller number of cooperative researches between a university and a company. This result suggests that activity of research and development of not only a company but also the whole area including a university are weak in these regions. From the viewpoint of creation of the local innovation, it is supposed that an innovation power is weak particularly in these regions. It will be thought that some policy measures depending on the local situation are necessary in the future.

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A talented players should be an engine of innovation, therefore the cultivation of human resources engaged in innovation is important. In this article, I introduce and discuss it about the personnel training and education utilized the characteristic of the innovation center from a young researcher to a graduate student and an undergraduate.

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