Building STP’s Ecosystem: Kitakyushu Approach - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 394

policymakers who have been eager to find some useful measures for regional
economic development since an era of so-called new economy. Therefore, STPs
have been built as a core of supporting system for R&D, business incubation,
industrial clustering (networking and governance among entrepreneurs), man-
agement of sustainable innovation system, and infrastructure development for
regional economic prosperity in many regions of the world. In this chapter, we call
it STP's ecosystem.
Kitakyushu City, one of the oldest industrial cities in Japan, is no exception to
it. In this chapter, we will review the Kitakyushu approach on building STP's
ecosystem and elucidate its process with clustering of networking sequences from
the point of view of regional system of innovation.
Now, let us begin with a brief review of Japan's experience to understand the
Kitakyushu approach on building STP's ecosystem.
2 A Historical Sketch of Japan's Experience to Understand
the Kitakyushu Approach
2.1 Integration and Network Linkages: Reminding Chris
Freeman and Luc Soete's 'National System
of Innovation'
As you know, Japan experienced amazing economic growth from the 1950s to
1980s such as Ezra Feivel Vogel, an American sociologist, described 'Japan as
Number One' in his topic published in 1979. In his eyes, the 'Japanese Miracle'
seemed to occur based upon basic education, low crime levels, an all-wise-all-
powerful bureaucracy, even a well-functioning democracy (Scalise 2001 ). Foreign
Affairs gushed ''Vobel's book helps explain why Japan is the most dynamic of all
modern industrial nations'' about it (the Economist, 2009.11.12).
However, there are some researchers or their groups who found the reason for
the Japanese success story from other fields: national environment related with
science, technology, and innovation. Chris Freeman and Luc Soete are also one of
them. They emphasized that the national environment can have a considerable
influence in stimulating or facilitating the innovative activities of firms and Japan
had it then. In their eyes, especially, the Japanese economy appeared particularly
successful in bringing technology to the marketplace and in building up the sci-
entific and the technological capabilities needed to sustain the process (Freeman
and Soete 1997 ).
As empirical evidences and analyses have been accumulated on industrial R&D
and innovation in Japan, the United States, and Europe, it became increasingly
evident that the success of innovations, their rate of diffusion, and the associated
productivity gains depended on a wide variety of other influences as well as formal
R&D (Freeman and Soete 1997 ). Freeman and Soete observed that these kinds of