The Fundamental Law of Science and Technology was established in Japan, which has caused more attention to academia-industry cooperation and to take a much interest in fostering venture businesses. However, such movements do not guarantee any break-through, since technological opportunities appear only in certain limited periods. Detailed historical survey of several cases of innovations shows that every case involves a period of technological development, termed the technological trajectory, and a period of diffusion of new products resulted from the innovation, termed the diffusion trajectory. An important period for academia-industry cooperation lies around the junction of the two trajectories, where business opportunities for venture businesses also are concentrated. Ten years around this junction is the most effective period for R&D investment. The technological opportunity for synthetic dyes in the late 19th-century Germany existed in 1860s; for electronics in late 1960s to 1970s; and for biotechnology from late 1970s to 1980s. The opportunity for the next-generation industry should be found in technological trajectories that are ripe for commercializing their new products.

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Since its move to the new Biwako-Kusatsu Campus (BKC), Ritsumeikan University has built an exchange network for research activities. Its focus has been to establish a new research system based on academia-industry partnership. The outcome of the four-year effort has been remarkably beyond expectation. The present paper gives a historical overview of the project and summarizes its present state. As sense of crisis of research and education in private universities provided an impetus to start the program. Features of the current academia-industry collaboration at BKC include a Unified Research Institute of Science and Technology and a Liaison Office. The institute constitutes of a Science and Technology Institute, Research Centers and an SR Center. The seven Research Centers that cover principal disciplines in the University have been actively pursuing joint research programs with other organizations. The Liaison Office, at the core of the collaboration program, serves as the interface with companies and other organizations outside the University. Collaboration with other universities, international activities, and patent application and licensing are among future agenda, as well as creation of an infrastructure of the development of venture businesses.

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While outsourcing is recognized as an effective means of management in many areas, few discussions have been made on outsourcing in R&D. The present paper overviews outsourcing in R&D with emphasis on its implication, relationship to technological strategy, and requirements in its implementation. One of the obstacles in outsourcing of R&D in Japan is the fact that the activities of research organizations as the partner are little known. The paper presents SRI International, based on California, USA, as an example of such organizations.

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Technological innovations including the intelligent transportation system (ITS) has shifted the focus of the automotive safety issue from the vehicle per se to the interacting system of humans, vehicles and traffic environment. The safety technology now addresses human perception and judgment in order to prevent human errors in driving. This requires basic understanding of the communication of the driver with the vehicle and environment. Nissan Cambridge Basic Research (NCB) was established in July 1993 for basic research in perception science, the first of its kind in the automotive industry. This paper discusses its unique research management. Innovative technologies often require guidelines provided by basic science instead of existing examples. Complementarily interacting science and technology in CBR will provide a promising model of outsourcing in the technological development in the next century.

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Outsourcing in product development has gained importance as technological innovation accelerates with growing risk and cost of investment for development. Outsourcing does reduce development cost and risk for a company, allowing focusing resources in more appropriate activities; however, a question remains whether a third party is capable of bringing satisfactory results in the endeavor full with unpredictability. One hand the same partner may be shared with a competitor with similar expectations. Success in outsourcing as a means to acquire a leading edge in competition would depend on various factors such as delimitation or transaction management with competitors. It may proceed at various levels including individual contracts, a set of contracts or an inter-company network, or even as an internal organization. The present work presents analyses of cooperation of automotive manufacturers and suppliers, and shows the importance of management of distribution of activities and internal organization as well as delimitation and relationships with the partner, and the relationships of the partner with competitors.

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Battelle, the world's largest independent research organization, with the 1997-year revenue of $950 Million and 7,000 or more staff, has entered the Japanese marketplace in 1970, with Mitsubishi Corporation as the agent. Battelle is well known for the development and commercialization of xerography. It is also known to have developed and implemented the concept of contract research, which has given birth to organizations specialized in providing R&D services, so-called CRO (Contract Research Organization). Because of industrial companies' interests in outsourcing of their R&D work for higher efficiency, the CRO business, particularly in the USA, has been steadily growing and is now expected to increase substantially towards the year 2,000. Battelle over the past decade has completed its restructuring with continuous renewal of technical resources focused on core technologies identified in response to the market requirements. The strategic view is on generation and acquisition of innovative technical ideas that create intellectual properties. During such restructuring Battelle business in Japan inevitably showed down. Like other CRO's, Battelle is going through re-identifying itself to be more responsive to the rapidly changing business environment and clients' needs/satisfaction by providing value-added multi-disciplinary services with high creativity.

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It has been reported in preceding papers that a maximum profit could be obtained for an industrial corporation when the value of (lowest) unit price of selling products, b coincides with the value of bm, a theoretically designed index. Effects of fluctuating markets on the index, bm, were analyzed in terms of the JSR-RDM Model previously proposed, and it was found that the variation in market size, either of expansion or shrink, increases the value of bm and that the wider the fluctuation, the larger the increment of bm becomes. It was found also that this type of increase in bm becomes to be more enhanced for larger scaled and less automated factories. Effective managerial countermeasures were given to restore bm to its original position. Corrections found to be necessary for Parts 7 and 8 of series of papers were given in the Appendix.

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