Japan's Innovation System and the Role of Star Scientists

日本のイノベーションとスターサイエンティストの役割：現状と課題

Star scientist, Venture, Funding, Patent

June 1, 2018

SciREX Center

2018-#1

https://scirex.grips.ac.jp/resources/8ed1d9a102eb2d2241009a31fbb070f8cf851a56.pdf

SciREX Working Paper

This study focuses on “Star Scientists” and examines their roles in and impacts on industries. Star Scientists are leaders of basic research. A “Star” often refers to a scientist who can publish many articles with high quality. However, we believe that Star Scientists can not only publish many high-quality articles but also positively contribute to industries. Therefore, we examine their roles in and impacts on industries through reviewing previous works. In particular, we introduce a series of research outcomes by Lynne Zucker and Michael Darby (University of California, Los Angeles) as pioneers of Star Scientists’ research. These researches suggest that Star Scientists can improve their academic performance and firms can also improve their business performance when they are connected with each other in some form or another. We call this phenomena as “Virtuous Circles in Science and Commerce.” Based on these previous works, we show new viewpoints about Japanese academic-industrial collaboration before the implementation of the Science and Technology Basic Law in 1995. We examine the background and characteristics of the national innovation system in Japan. We preliminarily analyze the most recent status of Star Scientists worldwide using our data. We also show the distribution of Star Scientists over countries and research fields. Thereafter, we analyze the relationship between the number of Star Scientists and national power (population, nominal GDP, GDP per capita). Further, we focus on Star Scientists in Japan and analyze how many Star Scientists in Japan register patents and the number of times their patents are cited to explain their impacts on industries. We find that over half of the Star Scientists in Japan have registered for patents and nearly half of them have been cited. This finding implies that Star Scientists in Japan contribute to not only academia but also industries. Finally, we overview future issues of Star Scientists’ research.