Recent trends in Japanese industrial policy: giant leap from technology policy to innovation policy

Summary form only given as follows. Japanese economy is now stunned with depression, which might lead to world-level economic crisis. Therefore, the Japanese government is now trying to reinvent technology policy to innovation policy along with restructuring of governmental agencies. Therefore, we had interviews from researchers in private sector and think-tanks, and had discussion with professors majoring in science and technology policy in order to find a new standpoint as a technology policy to spur an innovation-prolific society. We found that present technology policy is frame-worked by the linear model of research and development (R&D) but real R&D had changed into another system such as concurrent system model. We recognized that the scope of technology policy should be widened from R&D and manufacturing to total industrial activities including planning and marketing. As a conclusion, this paper recommends several new policy options which would be useful to revitalize the Japanese economy.