ABSTRACT
Government-initiated industry consortia that recruit academic researchers hold one possibility for new career patterns in science. Government initiatives for joint research with industry are not new to Japan; the government has been experimenting with them for well over one hundred years (Choy 1992). The early 1980s witnessed a new direction, though, when the Japanese government decided to apply consortia to the R&D needs of high technology industries by emphasizing basic research (NRC 1989: 20). The move drew inspiration from the weak state of academic research.
