Japón y Alemania: Sistema Nacional Creación de Spin Off

National Systems to Create University Spin-off Venture Businesses in Japan and Germany Masayulu Kondo Graduate School of EntrepreneurEngineering,Kochi University of Technology 185Miyanokuchi,Tosayamada-cho,Kami-gun,Kochi 782-8502, Japan The paper discusses the national systems to create university spin-off venture businesses, especially in high-tech areas, in Japan where university spin-off venture businesses are not common and Germany that creates more than double number of university spin-off venture businesses these days than the United States. “Venture businesses” here mean technology-oriented start-ups with high growth potential and high risk. In Germany, creating university spin-off venture businesses is a fairly new phenomenon. Still, more than six hundred companies spin off from universities annually, according to the ATHENE Project Report. This figure outnumbers the figure of the United States. According to the Association of UniversityTechnologyManagers (AUTM), around three hundred companies spin off annually from universities. This boom is created partly by German government policies. The federal government launched the “EXIST-University-based start-ups” Program to create venturebusiness culture in universitiesand their regions. In Japan, creating university spin-off venture businesses has just begun, since the government recently relaxed the restriction of national universityprofessors holding otherjobs. Though the whole picture of university spin-off venture businesses is not known yet, the author, together with another professor, has found only 128 university spin-off venture businessesas of September2000. The paper discusses four topics on university spin-off venture businesses in Japan and Germany, referring the situationin the United States. They are: 1) Current situation, 2) Profiles of entrepreneurs, 3) Venture infrastructure,and 4) University management including university-industry relation. While Japanese entrepreneurs and German ones have some similarities, they also have some differences. Japanese and German entrepreneurs start up companies as a challenge of life. Only one third of Japanese and German entrepreneurs point out that high income is one of strong motives, while more than a half of US entrepreneurs do so. Japanese and German entrepreneurs tend to identify their companies themselves and prefer to keep the majority share of their companies while US entrepreneurs do not. The great difference between Japan and Germany exists in the educational background of entrepreneurs. More than 40 percent of German entrepreneurs studied at graduate schools while only 3 percent of those of Japan studied at graduate schools. Venture infrastructure is well established these days both in Japan and Germany. For venture financing, both publicly-supported and private venture capitals are active in Japan and Germany. However, venture capital support programs work better in Germany partly because of direct public investment to companies rather than indirect public investment through venture capital funds. For stock exchange markets, both Japan and Germany established new stock markets recently. For supporting infrastructure, Germany has around 270 incubators and Japan has around 130. Though the number of incubators is different, it is not an issue. The issue is the existence of good incubation managers and performance of the incubators. Start-up companiesin German incubators go bankrupt at the rate of 6 percent within 3 years since their establishment, while the national average rate is 40 to 50 percent. The performance of the Japanese incubators is not known. University management structure is similar in Japan and Germany. A public university is not an independent legal entity in these countries, except Berlin. However, Japan and Germany differ from each other in university management. In Germany, universities have a budgetary pressure from the government and many young staffs are hired as fixed-term employees with no renewals. In addition, the government started a program to foster university spin-off companies in 1996. Thus, German universities are active in creating new start-ups and young staffs and students are interested in starting up companies. In Japan, the government and universities make efforts in transferring technologies from universities to the industry by establishing technology licensing organizations but only a few universities are encouragingprofessors and studentsto start up companies. A great difference exists between Japan and Germany regarding university-industry relation. In Germany, most of engineering professors have industry experience. Some of them have private research institutes to conduct applied research; and some have positions in Fraunhofer Institutes to conduct industry-oriented research. In Japan, the government has established venture business laboratories and regional joint research facilities in national universities to promote research aiming at creating new businesses and provides research funds for university-industry collaborative research. However, real business-oriented university-industry collaborativeresearch is limited in Japan. For Japan to create more university spin-off companies, a key issue is spin-off oriented university management including investment function and high-mobility employment, since financial environment and supporting infrastructure is well developed recently. 259 Authorized licensed use limited to: IEEE Xplore. Downloaded on November 4, 2008 at 17:47 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.