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Professional work: biomedical R&D, startups and entrepreneurship, university-industry collaboration and technology transfer, intellectual property law, invention for health, the link between higher education and innovation, international comparisons of the preceding particularly between Japan and America
My two homes are Port Angeles, Washington, and Tokyo, Japan. My education includes Swarthmore College (physics 1975), Harvard Law School (JD 1980), Mayo Medical School (MD 1984), and Johns Hopkins (MPH 1986 and General Preventive Medicine Residency 1992-94). I worked in Tianjin Children's Hospital and then the Chinese Academy of Preventive medicine in 1986-87. I joined the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1988, working first as a cancer epidemiologist (largely on collaborative studies in China), then in Science Policy and then in technology transfer as the person responsible for collaborative agreements with industry to develop anti-cancer therapies. I came to Japan in 1997 as an Abe Fellow to study the Japanese system of university-industry cooperation. Since 1998 I have been a professor in the University of Tokyo comparing startups, entrepreneurship and the commercializtion of biomedical discoveries in Japan and the U.S.
Bridging Islands (Oxford 2007) and the 2010 Nature Reviews Drug Discovery article on the origins of a decade or drugs recently approved by the FDA summarize much of my research and show the importance of new companies for innovation. From summer 2010 to summer 2011, I was a visiting professor in Stanford Medical School developing road maps for entrepreneurs to establish companies in America to commercialize Japanese discoveries.
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Major Publications
- Kneller, Robert. The importance of new companies for innovation, and ways to improve Japan’s environment for science based entrepreneurship. Chapter 3 in Watanabe, Toshiya [ed]. University and Human Resource Development in Innovation Systems. Tokyo: Hakuto-Shobo Publishing Co. 173-200. [The published article is in Japanese, but it was translated from the original English by Shudo, Sachiko.]
[link to bilingual version (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2010. Importance of new companies for drug discovery: origins of a decade of new drugs. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 9 (November) 867-882.
Link to article
[Link to summary in Japanese, courtesy of MSA Partners LLC (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2011. Invention Management in Japanese Universities and its Implications for Innovation: Insights from the University of Tokyo. In S. Shane (ed). Academic Entrepreneurship in Asia: The Role and Impact of Universities in National Innovation Systems. Cheltenham UK: Elgar 69-85.
- Kneller, Robert. 2010. The changing governance of Japanese public science. In R. Whitley, J. Glaser & L. Engvall (eds), Reconfiguring Knowledge Production: Changing Authority Relations in the Sciences and Their Consequences for Intellectual Innovation, Oxford: Oxford U. Press. pp 110-145.
(This chapter documents the high degree of concentration of R&D funding in just a few Japanese universities and examines its causes and possible consequences. Included is an analysis of the various types of funding and their allocation mechanisms.)
[link to near-final chapter (PDF file)]
- Kneller, R. & Shudo S. 2008. Large companies’ preemption of university inventions by joint research is strangling Japanese entrepreneurship and contributing to the degradation of university science. Journal of the Intellectual Property Association of Japan 5 (no. 2) 36-50. (Japanese and English).
[link to bilingual final version (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2008. Invention Management in a Major Japanese University and its Implications for Innovation. In AUTM Technology Transfer Practice Manual 3rd Ed. Vol. 3, Part 2.
[link to introduction.] [link to late draft (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2007. Bridging Islands: Venture Companies and the Future of Japanese and American Industry. Oxford University Press.(This book compares the environment for R&D-based startups in Japan and America and their importance for early stage innovation.)
[link to summary]
[link to late draft of Ch. 3 comparing university industry cooperation in Japan and the US (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2007. Prospective and retrospective evaluation systems in context: insights from Japan. In Whitley, Richard & Glaser, Jochen (eds.), Changing Governance of the Sciences: the Advent of Research Evaluation Systems (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook). Springer: Dordrecht, Netherlands.
(This chapter describes peer review of research funding in Japanese universities.)
[link to: front pages, complete late draft] (PDF files)
- Kneller, Robert. 2007. The beginning of university entrepreneurship in Japan: TLOs and bioventures lead the way. Journal of Technology Transfer 32 (no.4, August) 435-456. (This article describes the post-2003 Japanese system of university-industry technology transfer and its implications for entrepreneurial startups.)
[link to article (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2006. Japan's new technology transfer system and the preemption of university discoveries by sponsored research and co-inventorship. Journal of the Association of University Technology Managers 18 (no. 1, summer 2006) 15-35.
Republished with permission in Industry and Higher Education 21 (no.3, June 2007)
[link to article (PDF file)]
- Kneller, Robert. 2005. Correspondence: The origins of new drugs (in 2 parts). Nature Biotechnology 23 (5&6) (May & June 2005)
[ link to articles. May, June] (PDF files)
- Kneller, Robert. 2003. Autarkic drug discovery in Japanese pharmaceutical companies: Insights into national differences in industrial innovation. Research
Policy Vol. 32: 1805-1827.
[link to: front page, complete late draft] (PDF files)
Kneller, Robert. 2003. University-industry cooperation and technology transfer in Japan compared with the US: another reason for Japan's economic malaise? University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law Vol. 24(2) pp. 329-449. (summer). (This article describes how university-industry cooperation occurred in Japan prior to the incorporation of universities in 2004, and the associated legal framework.)
[link to article (PDF file)]
- ロバート・ケネラー. 2003. 知的財産制度とイノベーション. 後藤 晃・長岡 貞男 (編). 産学連携制度の日米比較(第2章). (Japanese version of above.)
[link to late draft (PDF file)]
Recent Presentations
- Starting Companies in America to Commercialize Japanese Discoveries. Presentation on 14 Feb. 2012 in Tokyo as part of the University of Tokyo's Intellectual Property Management, New Business Forum, Project
[link to bilingual PPT)]
- Linking Japanese University Science to Silicon Valley (or other overseas entrepreneurial regions). Presentation at the 84th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Japanese Biochemical Society, Kyoto, 24 Sept. 2011. (English slides with Japanese translation).
[link to PPT)]
- University IP management and science-based entrepreneurship in Japan--impact on innovation and questions for America , 17 June 2011, Office of Technology Licensing, Stanford University
[link to PPT)]
- University Technology Management and its Impact on Relations with Industry: A comparative Japan-US perspective. 30 June 2009 presentation to the 4th public seminar organized by the University of Tokyo's Endowed Chair for Intellectual Asset Management.
[link to English PPT)]
[日本語のPPT)]
- The Relevance for Developing Economies of Technology Transfer from Universities and Government Research Institutes. 25 June 2009 presentation to the Asian Productivity Organization's Multi-country Study Mission on Management of Technology (in Tokyo).
[link to PPT)]
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photo credit: Yuriko Nakao, Reuters 3 Oct 2009
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