"There are other ways that Japan should make fuller use of its research talent, says Sadao Nagaoka of the Institute of Innovation Research at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, who last year published the results of a survey of more than 5,000 Japanese and US inventors that he conducted with John Walsh [School of Public Policy] of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The survey found that far fewer inventions in Japan came from people working in very small companies than was the case in the US, where spin-offs and start-ups have played a central role in the extraordinary flowering of innovation experienced in particular in areas such as Silicon Valley."   Source: Financial Times - December 8, 2010