National Institute of Science and Technology Policy

Abstract It is found that private firms are withdrawing from basic research, as evidenced by the decline in the number of scientific papers written by authors who are inside of firms. On the other hand, scientific knowledge is becoming increasingly important in the industrial innovation process, so that accessing external scientific knowledge for science based innovation becomes critical to radical innovation at firm. This study conducts an empirical analysis of absorptive capacity required to realize radical innovations based on scientific knowledge. Specifically, by connecting bibliographic information of academic papers and patents with firm data from the Japanese National Innovation Survey, we analyze the type of absorptive capacity by the way to obtain external knowledge. The results show that internal R&D is important both for with and without collaboration with university, while human capital with experiences of scientific research in university is important, particularly for successful innovation through university collaboration.

The predominant research publishing system is not equitable by design, nor optimised to advance research to create knowledge and ultimately to benefit society. Open Research Central (ORC) was created to foster the re-imagination of the research dissemination system to facilitate trust, transparency and equitable participation. In five years of operation, before dissolving, the non-profit organisation produced outputs and learnings valuable to the development of a responsible research dissemination system. We are sharing our experience in the hope that it will provide others who share the same vision and goals with useful materials to build on. We think that there remains a need for global, cross-stakeholder exploration to build collective understanding of research validation and dissemination and to pilot solutions. However, as this article will explore, enabling and supporting the development of such a collective voice and consequent action is a challenging endeavour in the current landscape and funding environment.

In this study, the text information of academic papers published by Japanese authors (about 1.7 million papers) and patents filed with the Japan Patent Office (about 12.3 million patents) since 1991 are used for analyzing the inter-relationship between science and technology. Specifically, a distributed representation vector using the title and abstract of each document is created, then neighboring documents to each are identified using the cosine similarity. A time trend and sector specific linkages within science and technology are identified by using the count of neighbor patents (papers) for each paper (patent). It is found that the science intensity of inventions (the number of neighbor papers for patents) increases over time, particularly for university/PRI patents and university–industry collaboration patents over the 30 years studied. As for university/PRI patents, the institutional reforms for the science sector (government laboratory incorporation in 2001 and national university incorporation in 2004) contributed to the interactions between science and technology. In contrast, the technology intensity of science (the number of neighbor patents by paper) decreases over time. It is also found that the technology intensity of life science papers is rather low, although they have a significant impact on subsequent patents. However, there are some scientific fields which are affected by technological developments, so that the state of science and innovation interactions is heterogeneous across the fields.

As novelty is a core value in science, a reliable approach to measuring the novelty of scientific documents is critical. Previous novelty measures however had a few limitations. First, the majority of previous measures are based on recombinant novelty concept, attempting to identify a novel combination of knowledge elements, but insufficient effort has been made to identify a novel element itself (element novelty). Second, most previous measures are not validated, and it is unclear what aspect of newness is measured. Third, some of the previous measures can be computed only in certain scientific fields for technical constraints. This study thus aims to provide a validated and field-universal approach to computing element novelty. We drew on machine learning to develop a word embedding model, which allows us to extract semantic information from text data. Our validation analyses suggest that our word embedding model does convey semantic information. Based on the trained word embedding, we quantified the element novelty of a document by measuring its distance from the rest of the document universe. We then carried out a questionnaire survey to obtain self-reported novelty scores from 800 scientists. We found that our element novelty measure is significantly correlated with self-reported novelty in terms of discovering and identifying new phenomena, substances, molecules, etc. and that this correlation is observed across different scientific fields.

The Delphi approach is a central method in technological forecasting. It has been used in thousands of scholarly works and extensively outside academia, often in relatively narrowly scoped case studies. With the notable exception of Japan and a few other countries, broad Delphi studies run in the context of national-level policy planning are seldom seen. This study presents results on implementing the long-running Japanese Science and Technology Prediction Delphi survey developed by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Finland. This study reports the implementation of the 702 statement Delphi and on the reflections of the expert opinion study against quantitative data on Finnish research capabilities. The differences in expert opinion are discussed between Japanese and Finnish experts and the importance is highlighted that contextual factors play in responses received from the experts even on extremely global issues, such as the development of science and technology. It is proposed that quantitative data can serve as an important contextualization tool for the expert opinion results.

NISTEP conducted the 11th Survey of Scientific and Technological Foresight to develop the 6th Scientific and Technological Innovation basic plan. The research consists of Horizon Scan, Future Vision, Delphi Survey and Scenario Planning. The Delphi survey was a questionnaire and received responses from approximately 6,000 people. Based on these results, to build a desirable future society, not only the technology itself, but also elements such as the reform and introduction of systems such as laws and ethics are important for the development of technology.

No AccessPolicy Research Working Papers16 Jun 2021Robots and Export QualityAuthors/Editors: Timothy DeStefano, Jonathan TimmisTimothy DeStefano, Jonathan Timmishttps://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-9678SectionsAboutPDF (1.8 MB) ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Abstract: Robots are rapidly becoming a key part of manufacturing in developed and emerging economies. This paper examines a new channel for how automation can affect international trade: quality upgrading. Automation can reduce production errors, particularly of repetitive processes, leading to higher quality products. The effects of robot use on export quality are estimated, by combining cross-country and cross-industry data on industrial robots with detailed Harmonized System 10-digit trade data. Robot diffusion in (preexisting) foreign customers is used as an instrumental variable to predict robot adoption in the home country-industry. The findings show that robot diffusion leads to increases in the quality of exported products. Quality improvements are predominantly driven by the upgrading of developing country exports; and within countries, quality improvements are driven by upgrading of (initially) lower-quality exports of developed and developing countries. The paper also finds some differences in the type of robots—sophisticated or more basic—associated with quality gains in developing and developed economies. Previous bookNext book FiguresreferencesRecommendeddetails View Published: May 2021 Copyright & Permissions KeywordsROBOTSAUTOMATIONPRODUCT QUALITYTRADEGLOBAL VALUE CHAINTECHNOLOGY ADOPTION PDF DownloadLoading ...