Eiji Ohno (p), Ryuta Mori , Masafumi Morisugi

In paddy fields in which rice to be used as staple food by many people in the world is cultivated, organic matter such as rice straw is decomposed anaerobically by flooding, and a large amount of methane, which is a greenhouse gas, is released. To convert the modern society maintained by mass consumption of such energy and mass emission of greenhouse gases into a sustainable resource recycling society is an urgent issue to be solved by contemporary science and technology is there.
A project team of Meijo University has been promoting establishment of original technology to produce energy and chemical products from greenhouse gases and waste using biological functions. As a result, the team has established the GET system, which is a technology for conveniently recovering methane generated with high efficiency by rationally applying anisotropic decomposition to rice paddy flooded with rice straw generated after rice cultivation with high efficiency; GET means "Get Energy from Tanbo", and Tanbo is Japanese for paddy field. By using this technology, the team succeeded in producing 300 liters of biogas (bio-methane) with a methane concentration of 60% from 1 kg of rice straw.
Then, the team developed a control system for storage supply system and gas engine generator to supply bio-methane produced by the GET system to gas engine generator without purification and to generate power stably. After that, the team improved the control system further and succeeded in generating electricity with output power of 800 W using bio-methane produced from rice straw and weeds as fuel. On the other hand, in paddy fields containing a large amount of fermentation residue after production of bio-methane, it was shown that rice cultivation without fertilization could be realized. However, in considering social implementation of the GET system, it turned out that there was a problem in terms of profitability.
In this study, we first showed how much subsidy by local government and labor support by local resident are necessary for the GET system to become profitable. And, by constructing a method to evaluate whether the GET system has social and economic values corresponding to the subsidy and the labor support, we proposed a business model for the GET system, and evaluated its social and economic values.

Ruben Fotso (p)

Although knowledge spillovers are at the core of the innovation policy’s justification, they have never been properly measured by any impact evaluation. This paper fills this gap by estimating the spillover effects of the Technological Research Institute (TRI) policy in France. The objective of the paper is to analyze and evaluate the indirect impact of innovation programs based on science-industry collaborations to improve innovation policy decisions. More specifically, it analyzes and estimates the effects of technological platforms on the performance of non-recipient SMEs. For that, we consider the French TRI called "Nanoélec", one of the TRIs based on technological platforms, located throughout France. To evaluate the indirect effects, we focus on geographical proximity by considering that the non-recipient companies located in treated department are likely to benefit from local knowledge spillovers. To the best of our knowledge, this empirical work is the first impact study that seeks to evaluate the indirect impact of a TRI on the performance of SMEs. Technological platforms are one of the preferred tools in France to accelerate the knowledge transfer from science to industry. Despite their proliferation, their real impact on performance of the companies remains un-evaluated. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature on the indirect impact of technological platforms. This work also contributes to the literature on the evaluation of innovation policies based on science-industry relations. Indeed, one of the foundations of these innovation policies is to generate the knowledge spillover that can benefit non-direct beneficiaries. Despite the importance of this policy, no empirical study, to the best of our knowledge, has sought to evaluate the indirect effects of these policies. From a sample of 270 SMEs observed over the period 2008-2016, the difference-in-difference method combined with matching methods tend to show that the non-beneficiary companies, located in the treated department significantly improve their socio-economic performance (turnover, financial autonomy and share of managers) compared to control companies located in the control departments. The analysis of the dynamic of the effects indicates that performance does not improve immediately after the treatment but rather with a time delay. Furthermore, it should be noted that the indirect beneficiary companies that effectively benefit from knowledge spillovers are constituted of local control companies, that is to say, the non-beneficiary companies, located in the control departments, with similar characteristics than those of treated companies.

Raphael Bar-El (p), Liran Maymoni

The natural tendency of startups is the concentration in main urban centers, while their share in peripheral regions is rather limited. The objective of this study is to identify factors that may explain this phenomenon, in order to contribute to the formulation of appropriate policies for the promotion of innovation in the periphery.
Our hypothesis is that startups that locate in the periphery have specific characteristics, and that their dependence on factors of the innovation ecosystem differs from that of startups in central regions.
We apply a questionnaire to 173 startups, 105 of them located in the metropolitan center of Tel-Aviv in Israel, and 54 located in peripheral regions. Data collected relates to the typology of the startups, including characteristics such as radical or incremental innovation, open or closed innovation, blue or red ocean type, etc.. In additional interviewees were asked to evaluate on a scale of 1 to 5 the importance of a list of factors of the ecosystem in relation to their startup.
A preliminary estimation using a logit regression indicates the types of start-ups are more likely to settle in the periphery. We further analyze the relative importance of various factors of the ecosystem for each type of startup, comparing between the periphery and the center. The results may provide effective information about appropriate policy measures for the attraction of selected types of startups to the periphery.