Regional accumulation of small and medium industrial enterprises (SMEs) is a basis of Japanese industry. However, such SMEs are facing various problems. Further, digital fabrication such as 3D printers may change industry itself drastically. This paper discusses SME in the digital fabrication era and collaboration among SMEs, academe and governments.

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"3D printers" have come to draw increasing public attention in these days. METI held a workshop on additive manufacturing from October 2013 to February 2014. Additive processes will offer two directions of developing (1) precision machine tools or additive manufacturing equipment and (2) manufacturing tools or 3D printers for use by diverse entities including individuals; and they are expected to find applications in advanced technology fields such as aircraft and medicine. Further, they will have the potentials of realizing indie, an unconventional type of manufacturing, by successfully combining many's ideas.
In this paper, summarize the discussion in the workshop and consider a next step of SMEs and government by analyzing a movement of hardware startups these days.

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Digital fabrication tools facilitate your making without professional skills. It will cultivate a personal ability to produce something new. This paper shows some cases of the effective cultivation in education. In the first case, to introduce the tools in class of manufacturing robots it raised an ability of creative that the student has. In the next case, to work on problem solution a team of students succeeded in producing a suitable prototype model in short term. In the final case, to introduce the tools in technical lecture course for engineers of the company the course students succeeded in producing an embedded computer system with sensors, motors or internet technology in a few days.

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Although applying diverse ICT systems on university's industrial activities has become observable recently, seldom studies on their evaluation were reported. Meanwhile, from the interviews with on-campus researchers, we found the questionnaire-based evaluation difficult without clearly defining the performance indicators as well as specific factors of the information delivery from liaison office to researchers. Thus in this study, we tried constructing an evaluation method targeting such problems, with special concerns to university's organizational and cultural characteristics.
Through the case study on Kobe University, we found this evaluation method help predict the performance of ICT use in particular regarding researchers' awareness of industrial activities and how liaison office is delivering information. Hence this evaluation method may contribute to the investigation of how to efficiently use ICT corresponding liaison office's information strategies.

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The Japanese government published [300,000 students plan] in 2008, and started the action which transferred the talents from overseas to domestic higher education institutions. However, some worrying problems like the decrease in the number of the foreign students and their low qualities have increased in recent years. One big reason is that there was no any fundamental change about Japanese foreign student regime in the postwar, while international competition for talents had been increasingly intensifying. Therefore, from the perspective of foreign students, studying in Japan compared to other countries, its charm weakened.
Firstly, from the perspective of foreign students, there are analyses of the transaction structure in the preparation before they enter the educational institutions to study, which is to identify trouble spots about the present Japanese system of foreign students. Thereafter, through school-level projects overseas of Industry-Academia Collaboration by Yamagata University, the studies conducted the transaction designed on less used time and costs-saving issues in the preparation of studying in Japan

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We usually consider university researchers as a supplier of technology seeds in industry-academia partnership. However, there is partnership based on needs of university researchers in developing new measuring, analyzing, experimental or medical instruments which are used in research. Based on interview survey, this paper has found university researchers bear the role as the "lead-users" in this type of partnership, and some characteristics of this type of partnership, such as effectiveness on marketing of new products, chance for SMEs. This type of partnership would expand the chance of innovation for firms, bring university researchers fruitful research by original instruments, and stimulate national R&D activities and medical-engineering cooperation.

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The purpose of this study is to explore the geographical relationship between universities and industries empirically using the data of joint patent applications.
As a result, I indicate knowledge flows geographically from university to industry, and also indicate industrial trends of its. For example, 1) there is a high ratio of application network in short distance (less than 100km), 2) large enterprises (LEs) that applied for joint patents tend to be distributed over a long distance rather than small-medium enterprises (SMEs), 3) there is not so much different pattern between LEs and SMEs that applied for joint patents in long distance (more than 500km), 4) chemical and pharmaceutical industries that applied for joint patents tend to be distributed over a long distance rather than machine and electrical industries.
Finally, I confirm that university knowledge seems to stimulate industrial innovation capabilities not only on the regional level but also on the national level.

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Most current intellectual property patent evaluation guidelines only include categories about 'evaluation of patentability' & 'evaluation of commercial potential'. However, it is not easy to evaluate intellectual property in the field of medical devices and drugs because we cannot fully assess social significance by above guidelines. The objective of this study is to establish the multifaceted and quantitative evaluation process for intellectual property created by research results in the medical field.
We added categories about `evaluation of social aspects' to above evaluation guideline. The novel guideline can help to assess medical significance (clinical needs and social needs). Moreover, we established the evaluation process with above evaluation guideline. The result indicates that the novel evaluation process is useful to promote the early-stage research & development of medical devices and drugs.

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