Formal boundary spanning by industry liaison offices and the changing pattern of university–industry cooperative research: the case of the University of Tokyo

Abstract

Although university–industry (U–I) collaborations promise numerous benefits, both parties need to overcome high cultural and organisational barriers in order to materialise potentials. A variety of boundary spanning structures have developed in the USA and other countries, and this paper examines the roles and effects of industry liaison offices (ILOs) in Japan based on the case study of the Division of University Corporate Relations (DUCR) at the University of Tokyo. In Japan, because of governmental regulations, traditional U–I cooperative research has been formed within faculty members’ interpersonal networks with corporate researchers. Thus, the cooperative research projects were small in size and limited to bring actual commercial benefits. This paper suggests that formal boundary spanning by ILOs could facilitate the formation of ‘inter-organisational’ alliances between university and industry, and the alliances could generate larger, interdisciplinary, explorative cooperative research, overcoming the limitations of traditional cooperative research projects initiated in informal and interpersonal approaches.

Keywords:

• boundary spanning structure
• technology transfer
• cooperative research
• university–industry collaboration
• Japan

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper titled ‘Role of formal boundary spanning structure and changing pattern of university–industry collaborative research in University of Tokyo’ has been presented at the PICMET 2008 conference. The authors appreciate the comments from the anonymous reviewers and express thanks to Tugrul U. Daim and Harry Rothman.

Notes

An international comparison will show that the U–I research project in Japanese universities is much smaller than that of US universities. Such a gap may be caused by numerous institutional differences. In US universities, it is usual that industry partners pay the costs of personnel expenses for faculty members during vacations, costs for research assistants, tuition of graduate school students, and 50% of indirect costs (administration and facility costs). However, in Japanese national universities, the faculty members’ expenses during vacations are paid by the government or the university and industry partners do not usually pay for the costs of graduate students and research assistants. Furthermore, the indirect costs are set at only 10% of the total research budget.