| Kathryn Ibata-Arens |
Biography |
Abstract |
- Associate Professor
- Department of Political Science
- DePaul University
- United States
|
Dr. Ibata-Arens is an associate professor in the department of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. Ibata-Arens specializes in international and comparative political economy, entrepreneurship policy, high technology policy and Japanese political economy. Her dissertation research was conducted at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo as a Fulbright Doctoral Fellow. Ibata-Arens’ current research examines emerging life science (biotechnology and medical devices) regions in Japan and the United States. Findings are presented in the book manuscript, Clustering to Win: Firm, Region and National Strategies in Life Science Entrepreneurship. Ibata-Arens was a JSPS post-doctoral fellow (2002-2003) at the Center for Advanced Economic Engineering (AEE), University of Tokyo and was a fellow in the Alfred P. Sloan/Social Science Research Council Program on the Corporation as a Social Institution (2002). In 2005 and 2006 she was a Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership Abe Research Fellow in the Faculty of Commerce, Doshisha University, Kyoto. In 2008, Ibata-Arens was a Japan Policy Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, D.C. and recently received a Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Grant for her work on national entrepreneurship and innovation policy. Ibata-Arens’ book Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Politics, Organizations and High Technology Firms Cambridge University Press, 2005 analyzes high technology firms and regional economies in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. Other works, on enterprise embeddedness and entrepreneurial business networks, appear in journals including Enterprise and Society and Journal of Asian Business and Management. Ibata-Arens also teaches in the Japanese Studies Program at DePaul.
Crafting an Entrepreneurial Economy:
University Start-Ups in Japan, Best Practices in National and Local Policy
This research explores the economic and societal implications of cultural shifts in countries
aiming to coax institutions of higher learning into becoming centers of entrepreneurial
business. In this regard, Japanese national policy has targeted both university technology
licensing and incubation as part of a bold attempt to shift the country away from a
conservative culture and towards an entrepreneurial one. Nevertheless, only a mere handful
of the thousands of “college” towns and cities around the world have become centers of
innovative and entrepreneurial activity. These select locales house colleges and universities
that serve as the institutional conduit through which numerous frontier technology (e.g.
nano and eco-bio) new business start-ups are formed. This proposed project explores
national and local best practices of these communities of innovation in Japan—the world’s
second largest economy and leading producer of frontier technologies including hybrid
engines and solar panels. Complementing existing approaches, the research draws on interdisciplinary
expertise in social network and geo-spatial analysis, as well as case and policy
studies. Therefore, in analyzing the historical, institutional, and network patterns in
university start-ups (utilizing the aforementioned methodologies), the objective is to yield
comparative models of success, generating effective “how to” policy lessons for national,
regional and university level practitioners. |
