Abstract
This article delineates how local actors accomplish the adaptation of a global structure and how the social relations in which actors are embedded affect their negotiation of new practices. Specifically, the article draws on interviews and archival research to examine legal and institutional change regarding academic entrepreneurship in Japanese bioscience. In the late 1990s, Japan began to imitate the United States’ method of promoting academic entrepreneurship. New legislation regulating university-industry ties constrained and even prohibited university scientists’ previous practices of informal collaboration with firms. This article shows how Japanese scientists reappropriated the new rules to continue working with firms in ways that would keep established relationships and work arrangements intact. Previously, Japanese scientists maintained informal, trust-based relationships with firms: scientists received “donations” from firms and, in return, provided the “favor” of intellectual property rights. After the introduction of formal rules, scientists tried to avoid breaching their gift-exchange-like relationships with collaborating firms by neglecting, partially following, or working around the new rules to keep giving favors to firms. By tracing the ways Japanese bio-scientists worked around the new system, I thus show how the social ties and practices that local actors are embedded in affect how they think about their work and their relationships: how previous practices and relationships “pull” loosely-coupled practices.
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Notes
I define academic entrepreneurship broadly to include any of the following: collaborating with non-academics on research, patenting, and licensing; establishing a firm based on university-based research; and joining research centers or consortia involving firms.
For purposes of this article, the biosciences include biology, chemistry, and medicine (Zucker and Darby 2007).
In Japanese university terminology, there are two kinds of collaborations: sponsored research and commissioned research. Sponsored research does not involve the active participation of the firm in research itself, whereas commissioned research usually involves both parties engaging in research. In this article, I use “collaboration” or “collaborative research” for both types of university-firm interactions.
Although the Japanese Bayh-Dole has been in effect since 1999, and TLO law went in effect in 1998, technology transfer through TLO started to burgeon only after the enactment of the National University Corporation Act in 2004, from when national universities could claim the IP rights of their faculty members without it being national inventions.
In terms of intellectual property rights, before the changes this study focuses on—which took place between 1998 and 2005—there were no definitive laws that governed university-based inventions. Instead, several Ministry of Education guidelines governed the IP rights of university-based inventions; these guidelines were published as “notifications.” (The Ministry of Education was later restructured as MEXT—Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). Notifications served as guidelines for universities to follow, and later notifications could amend earlier notifications. Weaving through the exact ramifications of such notifications is beyond the scope of this article (but see an excellent review in Kneller 2003). As a general rule, however, the laws designated as “national inventions” those inventions that arose from “commissioned research,” which included government-funded research and formally contracted industry-university collaborative research. However, the law allowed the funding firm to own up to 50 % of the rights if they clearly contributed to the invention. If the commissioned research was funded by government for a project specified as being for the purpose of developing practical applications, the allocation of IP rights was more complex: the inventions had to be reported to the university’s Invention Committee, and the inventions were, as in general principle, considered “national inventions,” although it was possible to use contracts to arrange for the firm to own fully or partially the IP rights (Kneller 2003). For inventions arising from grants-in-aid, the treatment would vary depending on the funding ministry’s regulations.
Because universities and the government almost never used the inventions themselves, it was thought best to leave them in the professor’s hands.
I calculated as 100 yen = 1 dollar throughout the article for the sake of simplicity.
These are called by various names, including “university-industry collaboration office,” “division of university corporate relations,” and “management center for IP and innovation.” Technology transfer offices are often called “TLO”—short for a technology licensing office. In Japan, due to the timing of legislations and also regulations, the division that handles university-firm interactions and the division that handles intellectual properties are often (at least nominally) separate.
In fact, as Murray (2002) notes, even research on the United States tends to focus on the formal interactions between universities and industries—thus missing other types of academic engagement such as consulting.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Nina Eliasoph, Iddo Tavory, Gabriel Rossman, Stefan Timmermans, Lynne G. Zucker and the Theory and Society reviewers and editors for their careful comments and criticisms. This work is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No 1063988, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organizations mentioned above.
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Kameo, N. Gifts, donations, and loose coupling: responses to changes in academic entrepreneurship among bioscientists in Japan. Theor Soc 44, 177–198 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-015-9248-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-015-9248-5