There are many studies that point out the relationship between organizational diversity and organizational requirements that are effective in promoting innovation.

In order to create innovation, it is necessary to have an organization that can make use of the strengths of human resource diversity.

And for realizing the effects of innovation through human resource diversity, it is essential to foster inclusion, i.e., to accept minority human resources fairly and equally, and to create an organizational culture and climate that allows them to fully demonstrate their abilities.

In the future, it is desirable to investigate the relationship between diversity and innovation more precisely by accumulating empirical studies and case studies of actual organizations based on these theoretical perspectives.

This special issue contains papers that discuss how R&D management should be to promote innovation, focusing on the diversity and incentive design. They cover a wide range of topics, including management of human resource diversity within departments, management of sharing and combining different knowledge among departments, and management of actors in an innovation system. The papers in this issue also differ in their academic approaches, such as management, economics, and law. We hope that this diversity of perspectives and approaches will provide readers with novel ideas of analytical themes and methods, as well as of new application of existing research.

Despite the close relationship between the innovation research and the diversity research in innovation activities with diverse members, there seems to be no comprehensive examination of the two research fields. The purpose of this paper is to attempt a multifaceted review of the innovation and diversity researches, and to suggest future directions for advancing researches on diversity managements in innovation activities. Specifically, we clarify that the innovation and diversity researches are complementary to each other in understanding diversity managements in innovation activities. In addition, we propose the design of incentives oriented toward stimulating "diverse contributions by diverse individuals" as a research agenda for the study of effective diversity management in innovation activities.

This study aims to clarify the process of sharing and evaluating subtle massage comfort in the massage-chair development. As a result, the designers acquire sensory criteria while accumulating experience through new product development cycles. They evaluate massage action by the prototype function based on their experimental criteria. And many massage techniques are realized as the state of components or digital codes and are shared within the development department. By combining them, new massage functions are multiply created. At the final stage, the development manager evaluates the prototype massage function and totally optimizes to enhance the comfort of the product. From this case, it is clarified that this massage function development is the process which involves both manipulating the realized part and evaluating the massage action based on the shared experimental criteria.

Given the recent revision of the Corporate Governance Code and the growing understanding of the Intellectual Property (IP) Landscape, IP activities are expected to contribute to business more than they ever have.

This paper examines the efficient organizational management and human resource development of the IP department from three perspectives: i) the specialized domain of the IP division, ii) the involvement of management in IP strategy, and iii) the collaboration with internal and external experts.

The case studies in this paper suggest that: i) it is rational to enhance expertise on a functional basis, rather than on an individual basis by creating a function-based organization; ii) cooperation between departments under the direction of management is vital since IP strategy is positioned as a part of the business strategy of the company; iii) the active use of external experts would help with adapting to the diversification and deepening of operations more efficiently.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of shareholder structure on the innovation activities of the firms by using the patent database and industrial enterprises database of China. In particular, we focus on the role of state-owned shareholders. The main results are as follows.

First, there is a tendency that the central state-owned firms and local state-owned companies produce new products. However, we only observed the tendency of patent application and registration for central state-owned firms.

Second, regarding the effect privatization on innovation, we find, that firms that have been privatized to private firms (hereafter: PPF), reduces the patent application or registration, tend to produce new product. However, we don't find any significant effect on firms that have been privatized to foreign companies (hereafter: PFF).

Third, our analysis shows that firms with high competitive pressures from foreign companies, export firms, debt less firms, firms with large market share, firms with large asset size, elder firms, have a tendency of application, registration and new products.

The results of this study, suggest that in China, leading-edge innovation was driven by state-owned firms, particularly state-owned firms which have strong supports from government, while new products that respond to the market needs are almost developed by the private firms.

With regard to Chinese universities, which play a major role in the rapidly developing trend of science and technology innovation and creation in China, this article review the current status of the utilization of scientific and technological results based on the latest statistics, and introduce their institutional framework, current issues and countermeasures.

This article also narrates the social situation in which Chinese universities find themselves, i.e. the position of Chinese universities as socialist countries despite the transition from a planned economy to a socialist market economy.

The 6th basic plan on science and technology, and innovation promotes co-creation with industries and citizens to maximize research outcomes. It has been attracting attention for science coordination such as science communication, research ethics, and shared activities of state-of-the-art research facilities. Generally, these activities are regarded as support activities which are different from research activities. However, there are several obstacles to obtaining incentives because they are carried out by researchers and faculty staff with advanced knowledge and experience.

In this paper, we clarify the difficulties of promoting co-creations in science coordination based on dichotomic recognition between service and research activities. We focus on shared activities that encourage to share the state-of-the-art research infrastructures for firms' users and academia, and show problems in securing incentives on the facility side only with support activities, and concerns that excessive research activities by facility staff will not provide sufficient support to users.

This paper proposes propose a methodology for developing criteria that are consistent with policy objectives and that take into account the boundaries between the activities of firms and public institutions. The methodology consists of four steps based on the idea of a National Innovation Systems.

In this paper, we applied this methodology to four subjects belonging to a government agency that implements innovation policy, and evaluated its comprehensibility, usability, and effectiveness. In addition, we interviewed one expert to evaluate the criteria developed by the application of this methodology. In conclusion, we were able to confirm a part of the validity of the proposed methodology.