The role of mission-oriented basic research project as a part of the innovation system is becoming more critical. We investigated the success factors of the breakthrough at the stage-gate II, the barrier between the mission-oriented basic research and the applied research, as JST has been mainly funding to major projects of mission-oriented basic research. The common factors were the strong leadership of the project leader and the robust basis of the research subject. Moreover, the several project-specific success factors were recognized for each project as follows: the collaboration, the funding, the management, and the applicable demonstration. In particular, the success factors based on the collaboration were found to consist of the following factors:(1) the seamless collaboration between research systems,(2) the parallel collaboration between research systems,(3) the academia-industry or the interdisciplinary collaboration in the project,(4) timely contact between the academia and the industry, and (5) the inquiry from the stage of applied research.

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National R&D projects must be implemented more efficiently and effectively by strengthening the Plan-Do-Check-Action (PDCA) cycle, NEDO conducts pre-project, interim and post-project evaluations as well as follow-up monitoring and evaluation. Among these evaluations, we have conducted follow-up monitoring and evaluation of past NEDO projects since FY2004. We have tried to track how results from our R&D projects have generated outcomes and to improve our project management through questionnaires and interviews for organizations participating in past NEDO projects. In this report, we will present results from a follow-up chart that was created to visualize important management factors in chronological order after we introduce the background and purpose of follow-up monitoring and evaluation. By using a follow-up chart, we could obtain some suggestions to improve our project management, and we think it is necessary to improve our methods so that they are more accurate and objective.

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AIST has performed systematic research evaluation for individual research units since the start of the institute. In the second period (2005-2009), AIST has introduced the new research evaluation scheme named "Research Evaluation from the Perspective of Outcomes". Every research unit should have presented the expected outcomes of R&D and the scenario/roadmaps for the realization of the outcomes. This scheme is found to be helpful to the research units and AIST which aiming at the creation of the innovative industrial technologies. New design of the research evaluation scheme which including the interaction between academia and industry is thought to be necessary in the next stage toward the innovation through the academia - industry collaboration.

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In the Japanese innovation system, large enterprises have switched from the former policy that they get and supply themselves various resources to the new policy that they cooperate with universities and/or small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Although it is being improved to promote the cooperation, the intellectual property rights system does not necessarily contribute to the cooperation, judged from how universities and SMEs actually use the system. After analyzing both the opinion survey of intellectual property rights to SMEs and the issues in encouraging the cooperation to universities, we have made practical studies. As the results, it is found that the intellectual assets such as technologies, talented persons creating new technologies, powers arising from organization, customer networks, and brands, are important factors that make intellectual property rights function enough as the cooperation tool. It is also demonstrated that the cooperation not only between industry and university but also among industries is increased both by understanding the significance of intellectual assets deeply and by using them practically.

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Based on the problems of what is the relationship between the activity items and what is the difference between the research units in the industry-academia collaboration activities of research institutes in the field of industrial science and technology, I analyzed the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) as a case example. It is revealed that the diversified industry-academia collaboration activities can be classified into 3 domains of "industry", "academia" and "government", and it is also found that there are correlations between the activity items within each domain and over each domain. Besides, it is revealed that the research units can be classified by that each research unit is strongly directed toward which of the 3 domains. Useful basic information to study the industry-academia collaboration activities comprehensively to implement their promotion, support and evaluation effectively is found. In the future, it will be important to analyze the detailed data on the partners of each activity item and the data on other research institutes, and to analyze the success and failure, and the contribution to research activities and technology transfers of industry-academia collaboration activities.

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