ABSTRACT
The American Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a “birth of a star” system that turns obscure scientists into entrepreneurs. The Japanese SBIR program only looked similar to the American SBIR one but turned out to be quite different. The characteristics of the Japanese version are exactly the reverse of the American version. The American SBIR program is a bold industrial policy launched by the nation based on the hypothesis that “small businesses give rise to innovation” and also a national project should be designed to nurture young obscure researchers into becoming entrepreneurs of start-ups. The chapter examines what kind of variation was brought to society due to the differences in strategy and systems between the Japanese and American SBIR program. In order to encourage the setting up of university initiated startups in Japan, the knowledge cluster and industrial cluster policies have been implemented for a long time with an enormous budget.
