RESEARCH CONSORTIA AS A VEHICLE FOR BASIC RESEARCH - THE CASE OF A 5TH-GENERATION COMPUTER PROJECT IN JAPAN

This paper investigates the advantages and disadvantages of a publicly supported government-industry research consortium as a vehicle for co nducting basic research, taking Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Syst ems Project as a case. After discussing the organization, activities, and achievements of the project, we inquire whether the usual explanat ions of cooperative R&D apply to the project. Complementarity of resou rces from different companies may not have been as important as in pre vious research associations in Japan (e.g. the VLSI Association) but t he establishment of a temporary research institute with seconded resea rchers was an effective way to deal with the limited mobility of resea rchers in the Japanese labour market. Most importantly, the project fo stered the spillover of created knowledge. There remains a doubt, howe ver, whether the project can be a model for future research projects. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.