The science and technology indicators in Japan have been developed as an important infrastructure, along with relevant statistics, for studies of science and technology policy. While this kind of activity in Japan started almost 20 years behind the U.S., the Japanese indicators have realized some unique features, such as the cascade structure designed to provide a general view of science and technology activities of a nation and the development of the General Indicator of Science and Technology. The Japanese indicator development attracted much attention from researchers in OECD and Asian countries. They also influenced the design of science and technology survey, including the revision of the questionnaire, in Japan. However, many problems have yet to be solved. For example, incongruent criteria hinder accurate comparison of the Japanese and American situations, though corrective measures have been taken. While much effort is made for data acquisition, very limited resources are available for maintenance, management and correction of the accumulated data. Furthermore, other infrastructures, including relevant documents and databases, accumulation of case studies, network building for their efficient use, development of methodologies, and education and training of competent staff, are still unsatisfactory. These infrastructures are indispensable .for evidence-based studies and establishment of the science and technology policy, of which the importance should be still better understood in this country.

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Silicon-Valley has turned out many high-tech start-ups even after the IT Bubble burst. Many students from abroad who have studied technology and science have gathered in the region. They have established their own start-ups. They repeat entrepreneurial activities until getting IPOs or Buyouts. These serial entrepreneurial activities are supported by the fact that potential executives and engineers are pooled in the region and are thrown into start-ups exactly when necessary. In addition, VC's early reductions of start-ups which do not show probability of growth accelerate serial entrepreneurial activities.

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The present work intends to identify common features in the "successful" academic start-ups in Cambridge, U.K. and discuss key factors for their success. Being one of the few areas in addition to Silicon Valley with significant aggregation of high-tech businesses chiefly consisting of start-ups, Cambridge is characterized by a business environment where many factors interact, e.g. informal human network involving serial entrepreneurs, support of new businesses by consulting firms and science parks, financing by many venture capitalists including gap funds from universities and angel investors, and a pool of highly educated people including entrepreneurs and engineers. This paper examines Cambridge Display Technologies and Astex Therapeutics as examples of successful academic start-ups in the area. Both the companies rely on recent research outcomes at Cambridge University as the technological bases. Described are the founders including University researchers, the management teams, business lines involving both inhouse development and intellectual property licensing to or alliance with existing companies, and the mechanism of financing from various sources such as the University gap fund, angel investors and other venture capitalists.

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This paper describes MarkAny Co. Ltd. as an example of Korean academic start-ups, which have recently been attracting attention. Start-ups in South Korea had generally been smoothly progressing in the last 20 years, but the number of companies showed a steep increase until 2001 and an abrupt decrease starting in 2002 because of the collapse of the "card bubble". The national research institutes drove the development of industrial technology in the country in the 1970s and 1980s, during a period when technology was in its infancy, but their role needs now to be reviewed due to the increased influence of universities and private enterprises. MarkAny was established in the late 1990s, a time when many new start-ups were beginning, by students of Sangmyung University, Hankuk University for Foreign Studies, Yonsei University and Hanyang University along with some students from China. In spite of investments from Samsung Electronics and some Japanese and Korean VCs since 1999, the company experienced severe financial losses due to premature markets more than three times. Restructuring and revising strategy helped the company overcome these crises and resume its growth, particularly owing to the growth of the document security market since late 2003. MarkAny, with its efforts in technology and product development for new markets and its global strategy, is expected to enter another expansion phase.

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Three Japanese academic start-ups were studied to discern their common characteristics from individual features. While established in approximately the same time, the companies are focused on different technologies (information technology, biotechnology, and biotechnology plus materials, respectively) from different institutions (a national research institute, a national university and a private university, respectively). The unified frame for comparison included (i) top management team (inventors, business founders), (ii) technology development (nature of the technology, intellectual properties), (iii) business development (business concept and planning, resources), (iv) network, and (v) legal, political and institutional aspects. Analysis showed that (1) the different technology development models for information technology and biotechnology influences business developments, such as alliance with other organizations or effects of legal, political and institutional factors, (2) the difference also affects the constitution of the top management teams, and (3) effects of financing schemes and original research institutions which have been revealed for academic start-ups in the U.S. do not necessary apply to the Japanese counterparts. The present study revealed effects of the basic technologies on the business activities of academic start-ups, thus showing a possibility of categorizing academic start-ups by technology. It also suggests, by comparison with earlier studies, some idiosyncrasies of the Japanese business climate in terms of supporting academic start-ups. However, the legal, political and institutional aspects discussed in the paper may be somewhat different from the actual situation because of the past limited period from which data were obtained. In addition, some of the issues presented in the paper need further verification by quantitative data.

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The resource-based view (RBV) has recently been attracting attention as a framework for entrepreneurship study. The present work presents an RBV analysis of the growth process of ACCESS Co., Ltd. as an example of Japanese high-tech start-ups. The company had limited resources at the time of foundation, and had been threatened by the mortarity risk until a certain level of resource accumulation was achieved. ACCESS has, however, successfully overcome such a risk by pursuing more than one stable business lines in parallel, and building up technical expertise, while managing R & D activities so as to avoid the threats of Microsoft. The competitive edge and growth of the company result from the management capability to make right decisions, and from the identification, accumulation and enhancement of its core competence.

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With a shift to knowledge society, ICT products are getting complicated and shortening its life cycle. This brings dramatic increase of development investment burden for product vendors. Therefore the importance of standardization that is created by collaboration over the companies rises, and the innovation by standardization rises also. Though Standard Development Organizations (SDOs), which is called a de-jule standard organization, does a very important role as an infrastructure of innovation, it takes time for standardization. So the gap between SDO outcomes and demand of companies is getting wider since the compatibility is important in the fast changing ICT industry. In this study, consortium that is increasing recently is taken up to solve problems of standardization. Consortium organizes co-operation, develops standards and promote the standards to the market. Case studies on several consortia were done, and try to raise critical factor for consortia management. First, "a life cycle of standardization" is discussed and classified them into three life stages, "the initial phase", "the development phase", and "the promotion phase". Then getting interview from consortia, critical factors for managing consortia are analyzed and distilled.

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The purpose of this study is to propose a fluctuation risk forecasting scheme about patent technical scope by quantitative element. In this study we proposed "redoc" as the parameter in decision making tendency. We analyzed patent specification by five indexes, the number of claims, the number of noun phrase, increasing rate of noun phrase, the rate of claim, the rate of group. It was found from the result that these five parameters are closely connected with XCLD (estimated changing amount of noun phrase) as objective variable. Furthermore in this paper we raised simulation method using the purposed Bayesian Network, It was found that the Monte Carlo method is more useful for forecasting XCLD.

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Recently, "setsumei-sekinin (responsibility for explanation)" in science and technology (S & T) has been drawing more attention in Japan. Although it is used in the various policy papers, official documents and media coverage, the concept of the word is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to propose a picture of "setsumei-sekinin" in S & T as the social responsibility based on the particularity of S & T. We firstly discuss it on the philosophy and development of accountability, political disclosure of information, and public right to know. We, then, introduce four S & T professional's phases to be obliged to explain to society based on the particularity of S & T between societies. At the end of this paper, we point to a discrepancy of the phases between which we extracted and which are presented in current Japanese S & T policy.

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