It has been about 10 years since the University Research Administrators (URAs) were introduced into the academic organizations in Japan. Through the development programs of URAs (2011-2012) by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan (MEXT) and its follow-ups, many URAs are engaging in research promotion activities and are acknowledged as specialists in the field of research management. Prior to the introduction of URAs, many other specialists, such as academy-industry coordinators or license associates, had committed to the research promotion activities in the universities. For the development and establishment of specialists for academy-industry collaboration, MEXT carried out some development programs (2008-2012). At present, national universities are required to meet social demands and to decide their manner of administration. Such universities have developed the specialists for research promotions based on the results or models shown by previous programs. In the feature articles, URAs belonging to three national regional universities, Kagoshima University, Saga University and Fukui University, introduce their activities on academy-industry collaboration and research promotion.

At Kagoshima University, a system has been established, URA (University Research Administrator) who provides research support, can collaborate more firmly with industry-academia collaboration coordinator who supports out-licensing and social cooperation in the same organization. This paper provides activities of URA such as acquisition and analysis for research promotion, interdisciplinary research promotion support and research funding acquisition support.

The National University Corporation Law enacted in 2003 stipulates that “national universities should disseminate research results and promote their utilization”, and industry-academia collaboration (social contribution), which is the dissemination and utilization of research results, is stated. It can be said that it is positioned as the third pillar following education and research. Prior to that, Saga University has been working on industry-academia collaboration and enhancing facilities since 1998. As a further development of this, in October 2017, we established the Regional Innovation Center led by the Research Administrator (URA) to promote research strategy, industry-academia collaboration, and research promotion support with a small number of URAs. In this article, I would like to introduce some of the activities and achievements of the Regional Innovation Center for about five years, and consider the significance of URA as a leader in industry-academia collaboration and research promotion.

Our URA promotes various collaborations while considering local characteristics, and challenges to create innovation with the aim of contributing to the region, based on the Headquarters for Innovative Society-Academia Cooperation, the University of Fukui. Starting from dialogues with various stakeholders such as companies, collaborators, local governments, the national government, and citizens, we are trying to match social needs with technological seeds, and are conducting a sustainable intellectual creation cycle. We introduce the mission of URA in collaboration between our university and the outsiders with some examples.

The purpose of this study is to measure the spillover effect of university-industry collaboration on regional growth industries and identify the factors that contribute to it, based on the framework presented to the American Council on Competitiveness in the United States. As a research method, multiple regression analysis was performed using the results of industry-academia collaboration at the universities as an input index, and the indicators such as the IT industry and biotechnology industry in the area where the university is located as output indexes by dividing them into four categories. The four categories are “Idea Generation”, “Idea Development”, “Productivity”, and “Prosperity”. As a result of the analysis, although the overall scale of industry-academia collaboration is still small and the direct stimulating effect on the regional economy is limited, the input of the universities contributes to the development of a specific industry and the motivation to start a business. The effect of promoting Idea Generation and Idea Development in the region was confirmed. In addition, both positive and negative impacts of university-industry-academia collaboration activities on the improvement of productivity of regional growth industries and the contribution of growth industries to regional Prosperity were supported.

This paper considers how many university faculty members are involved in management as corporate officers. Until now, industry-academia collaboration has been related to the fields of science and engineering and biological systems for the purpose of research and development. On the other hand, no empirical research has been conducted on the proportion of university faculty members involved in corporate management. Therefore, in this paper, we investigated how many university faculty members are involved in management at the corporate board of directors.

As a result, 171 university faculty members were involved in 108 of the top 200 companies by sales. By university, 115private universities (67%), 50 national universities (29%), and 5 public universities (3%) were involved in the corporate board of directors. By academic field, humanities and social sciences 129 people (75%) in the field and 32 people (19%) in the science and engineering / biological field were involved in the corporate board of directors in that order. From the above survey results, it was found that many university faculty members have industry-academia collaboration in the form of side business and inauguration as corporate officers, and that faculty members in the humanities and social fields are involved in management and are engaged in industry-academia collaboration.

Previous studies in Western countries show that the effects of research funds from industry have positive effects on faculties' publications. However, in Japan such research has been very limited due mainly to the difficulty of data collection of each faculty's received research funds.

In this study the effect of research funds from industry on faculties' publications was empirically examined by using a ten-year longitudinal data of faculties at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. The result shows that annual research funds from industry more than 10 million and less than or equal to 100 million Japanese Yen have a positive effect on faculties' publications with three-year time lag. This finding implies that a large-scale university-industry collaboration (UIC) contributes to the academic publication productivity of the faculties involved in UIC.

In order to clarify the continuity of cooperative researches between Shimane University and companies in Shimane prefecture, we analyzed the data of the cooperative research contracts from 1995 to 2019 of Shimane University. The following results were obtained.

(1) Total numbers of partner companies for the cooperative research were 145, of which 141 were SMEs.

(2) There are 17 companies that have their continued cooperative research for more than 5 years. Many companies have not conducted their cooperative research continuously.

(3) A typical pattern of cooperative research with continuity has become clear from the examination of the factors that continue the cooperative research. The pattern is as follows. The partner company has a plan of a new product, and Shimane University supports the solution of its technical problem. Then, the performance of the developed product is evaluated and verified by Shimane University. In addition, the collaboration with Shimane university leads to corporate advertising effects.