Venture Review

　Innovations in the frontier field such as information technology and biotechnology were achieved by emerging companies in Silicon Valley and Great Boston areas. Then, Technology transfers of university invention to emerging companies and start-ups by university researchers came to attract attention. The promotion of university start-ups becomes a policy problem in many countries and regions, and Japan is not an exception, too, but unfortunately there is rarely a success example in Japan.
　E.B.Roberts and D.E.Malone presented the framework that in spin-of process, mechanisms for high-selectivity and a high level of support must be in place by R&D organization in environments where venture capital and entrepreneurs are scarce. This framework is investigated by other researchers in case studies in Europe countries. But they do not analyze how to select and support. This paper develops the strategy how to incubate university start-ups, especially focus on risk reduction dynamism.
　Nine cases of university start-ups were investigatedand and divided to two group, technology push type and market pull type. Conclusion is that R&D organization should incubate a technology push type by a high level of support. Innovations in the real world are located in between a technology push and a market pull, but innovation of an existing company is near to a market pull, and innovation of a university start-up near to a technology push. Technology push innovation has to face a bigger technology and market risk (double risk). I carried out two case studies by participation observation, focusing on a process overcoming particularly double risk. The conclusion to be provided from cases is that a key factor for success is strong commitment of an experienced business person who can convert a technology to market pull by his business network.

Key words:university start-ups, innovation, technology push, market pull incubation

　Recently, University Spin-off Ventures increase rapidly. However, they have the difficulty in early-stage financing. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the condition to form regional venture capital with a classic venture capital(VC) features in accordance with requests by limited partners(LPs), because regional VC will be one of the solutions to early-stage financing for University Spin-off Ventures.
　From the research for this paper, at first,as for formation of regional VC with classic VC features, the important elements would be the designing of fund, the selection of general partner and existence of LPs with some intentions. Moreover, these conditions are closely related with each other. At the second, in case where the LPs have less experiences enough to invest in the VC fund, they select not only to govern by contract but also to build up mutual trust. Because such trust is expected to decrease the agency cost.

Key words:Regional venture capital, Agency theory,Classic venture capital

　In this paper, the case study of the failure case of emergence new business development based on foreign R&D was performed, and the failure reason including the special feature and difficulty in this new business were analyzed. The case is the speaker business of Canon Audio.
　As the result, Champion activity and spot of trade friction to Canon were pointed out as a cause of the new business.
　As a cause of failure, it was pointed out that the positioning of the product was not fitted with customer needs, higher product cost than competitor, and the lack of selecting and focusing on better products
　And also the reasons are the malfunction of the channel of the sales company of each country, the restriction of the channel selection by the Canon brand use, the few champions at headquarter or other overseas subsidiaries, and the weakness of intellectual property management at overseas, were pointed out.

Key words:New Business Development, Emergency, International R&D, Champion, Canon-Audio

　The roles of the venture markets are important for the venture company promotion. This paper analyzes the relationship between the market returns and their volatility using the GARCH-types models. Moreover, we focus on the effects of the Livedoor shock on January 17, 2006 to the venture markets in Japan. The main conclusions obtained by the empirical study are as follows. First, the Livedoor shock has increased the volatility of the market returns in all of three venture markets. Second, decrease of market index increased the volatility after the Livedoor shock. Third, the liquidity of a venture market has decreased after the Livedoor shock, however these facts does not affect the market returns and their volatility. Forth, the trade-off relation of the risk and return does not exist in the venture markets after the Livedoor shock.

Key words:Venture markets , GARCH models, Livedoor shock, IPO, Structural change

　There are two aspects to the concept of empowerment, i.e. (1) relationships such as the delegation and power sharing and (2) motivation such as the reinforcement of desire for power in one’s mind. We conducted an empirical study to examine three hypotheses regarding psychological empowerment (PE) composed of Self-efficacy, Meaningfulness and Self-determination, based on a survey of 96 small and medium sized (SME) firms. Our model examines two stages of relationships: 1) one between organizational characteristics and PE, and 2) the other one between PE and achievements.
　The first hypothesis is that organizational characteristics such as the leadership of top management, communication and delegation of authority will affect PE. The second hypothesis is that PE will lead to positive motivation. The third hypothesis assumes the positive relations between PE and economic performance.
　The correlation analysis showed that the top leadership, communication and personnel measures correlated with a P value of 1% statistical significance with two or three PE elements, though delegation of authority had no significant relationship. Therefore, we concluded that our first hypothesis was supported by the data. The second and third hypotheses were examined by a nonparametric test of the average difference between the high and low performance groups. The second was supported by the results, but the third hypothesis was not supported by the data.
　There remains an interesting question as to why delegation is quite different compared to other factors in its relationship to PE and performance. This result is counter-intuitive and should be examined in future studies.

Key words:Psychological Empowerment, Delegation of authority, Leadership, Communication

　This paper focuses on research and innovation process of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. This study conducted empirical analysis of scientists’ activity using data on scientific papers and patent application. Examining affiliation of scientists, I found their affiliation was related to their research activity and involvement in innovation. However I couldn’t find how their research and patent activity were affected from the major change of Japanese Industry-University system. AIST scientists published more papers with more co-authors and AIST filed more patents based on their inventions. In contrast, university scientists researched with small network based on a few laboratory members. And their inventions belonged not to their university, but to many companies or scientists themselves. Their patent activities were different in individuals.

Key words:Regenerative medicine, Tissue engineering, Top Scientist, Research paper, Patent, Industry-University System

　The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between loan interest rate and the characteristic of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
　The respondents of the study were 517 SMEs that were granted loans from banks in Taiwan. The result showed a significant positive relationship between loan interest rate and the years of SME’s establishment, the age and sex of the entrepreneur, and collateral. It means that the more SMEs offer collateral, the lower the loan interest rate is.
　Therfore, this study provides implications that SMEs which were granted a low loan interest rate by the support of the goverment policy were charged a higher interest rate if no collaterals were mortgaged to the banks.

Key words:SMEs, Loans Interest, Collateral, Government Support

　It is pointed out that a lot of Japanese biotechnology start-ups are facing management issues, while the number of them has been growing up in these years. As the research on biotechnology start-ups has just begun in Japan, there have ever been few researches which expressly discuss the entrepreneurship in biotechnology start-ups, especially designing of business concepts. This research is intended to discuss what factors have much effect on the designing of business concepts of biotechnology start-ups, through a case study on a biotechnology start-up developing regenerating medicine based on innovative biomedical technologies. The research demonstrates and discusses the following points: designing of the business concepts is affected by types of technology, network, and medical regulations; the value chain and the balance between social benefits and risks are related to the concepts.

Key words:biotechnology start-up, business concept, types of technology, network, medical regulation

　This article argued about the transition of the local industrial systems in the Japanese local area based on the field research of the small and medium-sized companies in Tottori prefecture. In the traditional perspectives, the small and medium-sized companies in the Japanese local area have been treated as subcontractors so that they only produce low value-added. As the role of the companies invited from an urban area has changed because of the progress in globalization, they have to seek for another type of competitiveness. It is said that ‘regional supply chain model’ should be built with the function of Research & Development. However, there are a few literatures to investigate how it is like and what kinds of elements should be included in its model from the perspective of company competitiveness. Based on the results of this article, the companies had gained their competitiveness closely tied with the agriculture and fishery industry which diminished in the Japanese local area. It is important for regional economies to intensify the relationship between the industries. Since the Japanese local area has had a substantial structure with the urban area in the division of labor under the policy to invite large companies, this article points out the possibility to create new ties with the urban area when small and medium-sized companies can utilize the local resources effectively and can build the connection to exchange an intellectual people.

Key words:local industrial systems, regional supply chain, local resources

　High-tech startup companies in Silicon Valley often restart themselves by restructuring their capital structure when their business does not progress as originally planned. In this paper, we will analyze the restructuring method which is relatively well-established in Silicon Valley as the restart mechanism of startup companies.
　Restructuring of capital structure, usually lead by one of the existing investors, is done by new financing which dilutes the ownership of existing investors so severely that their economical value becomes virtually worthless. In many cases, restructuring is accompanied by changes in business model, business field and management.
　Restructuring is an useful tool to generate new businesses utilizing prior funding and developed technologies which did not materialized into an originally planned business and it should be able to be applied to startup companies in Japan.

Key words:Restructuring, Capital structure, Restart, Turnaround, Silicon Valley