Title: Clusters and outsourcing innovation activity

Authors: Riad Abadli; Abdelhafid Otmani

Addresses: EHESS, 190-198 avenue de France, 75244 Paris cedex 13, France ' Laboratoire d'Économie Dionysien (LED), Paris VIII University, 02 Rue de la Liberté, 93200 Saint-Denis, France

Abstract: The end of the 20th century was marked by the trend toward internationalisation (Dana et al., 1999). To supervise and accompany this phenomenon a World Trade Organization was born in April 1994. Firms delocalise more their activities towards countries where production costs are lower for an increasing productivity. This is often accompanied by outsourcing of innovation activity and of technology often used afterwards by host countries. Answering to all of these requirements, countries had to redefine their economic strategies, and it was in this context that the politics of clusters was born. In this article, we try to explain the way that clusters facilitate outsourcing innovating activity.

Keywords: internationalisation; clusters; globalisation; R&D; research and development; knowledge transfer; competitiveness; productivity; innovation outsourcing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2014.059464

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2014 Vol.12 No.2, pp.237 - 247

Published online: 16 Jun 2014 *

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