Formal boundary spanning by industry liaison offices and the changing pattern of university–industry cooperative research: the case of the University of Tokyo

Although university–industry (U–I) collaborations promise numerous benefits, both parties need to overcome high cultural and organisational barriers in order to materialise potentials. A variety of boundary spanning structures have developed in the USA and other countries, and this paper examines the roles and effects of industry liaison offices (ILOs) in Japan based on the case study of the Division of University Corporate Relations (DUCR) at the University of Tokyo. In Japan, because of governmental regulations, traditional U–I cooperative research has been formed within faculty members’ interpersonal networks with corporate researchers. Thus, the cooperative research projects were small in size and limited to bring actual commercial benefits. This paper suggests that formal boundary spanning by ILOs could facilitate the formation of ‘inter-organisational’ alliances between university and industry, and the alliances could generate larger, interdisciplinary, explorative cooperative research, overcoming the limitations of traditional cooperative research projects initiated in informal and interpersonal approaches.