Cosmopolitan Scientists

How a Global Policy of Commercialization Became Japanese

Nahoko Kameo

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781503640405, 9781503639928
• eBook ISBN: 9781503640412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

As the university transformed itself into a center of innovation, and biotechnology became a billion-dollar industry, commercialization of university inventions became both lucrative and urgent. In the United States, this shift decisively converted the academic scientist into an entrepreneur. From there, legal structures that facilitated university scientists' patenting and commercialization spread across the world, including to Japan, where earlier modes of doing science made such diffusion more difficult—and more interesting.

Cosmopolitan Scientists delineates what happens when global policies diffuse to different cultural and institutional contexts. Instead of simply accepting or resisting the change, Japanese university scientists creatively enacted the new rules, making unique local variations of the global policy—and thus making it Japanese.

Drawing on vivid accounts from bioscientists who experienced and enacted the shift toward commercialization, the book offers an insider's view into the way scientists navigate the complex and shifting landscape of science, innovation, and economic policy. In so doing it also tells a broader story of how the global rules can be successfully "naturalized"—modified, settled down, and made local.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• One: Global Policy, Inhabited Institutionalism, and Commercialization of Research
• Two: Commercialization of University Research in the U.S. and Japan
• Three: The Good Old Days Trust and Ties before the Japanese Bayh-Dole Act
• Four: Ambiguity and Loose Coupling The Gravitational Pull of the Old Practices
• Five: Institutional Travelers Japanese University Scientists as Cosmopolitans
• Six: A “Japanese” Collaboration
• Seven: Conclusion: Variation as Institutionalization
• Appendix: A Confessional Tale of Theory, Methods, and Positionality
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Series List