Industry and State Partnership: The Historical Role of Theengineering Research Associations in Japan

Abstract

This is an edited version of a monograph first published in 1986. The study provides an historical perspective on the emergence of Engineering Research Associations (ERAS) in Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s as an institutional means of promoting and facilitating collaborative research in industry. The ERAS were put to efficient use by MITI as vehicles for Japan's technological catch-up efforts. The study examines 71 ERAS, including the best known VLSI programme, which ran from 1976 to 1979 and is widely credited with lifting Japan to world leadership in the memory chips industry in the 1980s.