During a talk on May 13, Dr. Robert Kneller, a visiting professor at the Stanford Medical School, examined how national systems of industry-university cooperation impact innovation by comparing the Japanese system with that of the United States. Dr. Kneller has spent 13 years as a professor with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, a major science and engineering research center at the University of Tokyo.

His talk showed how the Japanese system favors exclusive transfer of academic discoveries to established companies. It also examined other factors affecting science and engineering entrepreneurship in Japan. The talk referenced recent research showing that, at least in pharmaceuticals, new companies are more likely than old to pioneer the early development of novel technologies, especially those arising in universities. Japan's experience is relevant to current debates in America related to university management of intellectual property, entrepreneurship by faculty and students, appropriate ways to encourage industry-university collaboration, and the importance of peer review in allocating government university research funding.

Over thirty-five scholars from sixteen different universities in the United States, Japan, and Europe gathered in Bechtel Hall for a two-day academic conference entitled Entrepreneurship and Japan's Transformation.

At the conference, twelve new papers exploring aspects of Japan's entrepreneurial environment were presented from academic fields such as political science, economics, strategy, and organization theory. The papers and discussion examined new developments in Japan, including potential opportunities opening up after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake. Topics ranged from new firm profitability, the politics of firm creation, management of innovation, and large firm entrepreneurial processes in Japan. The goal was to lead toward a better understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship, and how analyses of Japan might inform more theoretical discussions.

The conference also opened and closed with panel discussions featuring prominent experts on Japan's economics, social systems, business, and government, who discussed the effects of the great earthquake on Japan today as well as the possible impact on future research about Japan. The papers and discussions presented at this conference will be presented for publication in various journals and also compiled into an edited volume.

Dan Wang, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Stanford, delivered an engaging talk on the economic impact of skilled return migrants on their home countries.

While much scholarship contends that members of skilled diasporas are ideally positioned to transfer knowledge and resources back to their home countries, Wang's research suggests that many returnees are often unable and/or unwilling to do so. In this last SPRIE seminar of the spring quarter, Wang presented findings from a novel 1997–2011 survey of over 4,250 former J1 Visa holders from over 80 countries. The principal outcome studied concerns how skilled returnees reapply and make use of the knowledge they gain abroad (in this case, the United States) upon reentry to their home countries. Specifically, Wang compared the knowledge transfer outcomes of returnees to those who stayed abroad, and contrasted returnees from different countries and industry contexts, including returnee entrepreneurs.