Title: Patterns of R&D internationalisation in developing countries: China as a case

Authors: Jun Jin; Yuandi Wang; Wim Vanhaverbeke

Addresses: School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China ' Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China ' Department of Business Studies, Hasselt University, Agoralaan, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium; ESADE Business School, Av. Pedralbes, 60-62, 08034 Barcelona, Spain; National University of Singapore, Eusoff Hall, 25 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, 119615, Singapore

Abstract: Some developing countries are emerging as nexuses in the globalisation of innovation activities, serving as the location for crucial R&D activities from developed multinational firms (DMFs), which are headquartered in developed countries, and spawning emerging multinational firms (EMFs), which are headquartered in developing countries and conduct some of their R&D in developed countries. This paper proposes a framework and a methodology to identify international patterns of innovation at the firm-level as well as at the national level. According to a reconstruction of the R&D owner-inventor structure, we develop the analytical framework as a 3 × 3 matrix and identify three different patterns for both EMFs and DMFs in the organisation of their R&D internationalisation activities. We derive from this matrix three patterns at the national level to describe the ways how a developing country can reach the global innovation stage. We use China as a case to verify this framework.

Keywords: R&D internationalisation; innovation patterns; patents; multinational corporations; MNCs; China; research and development; developing countries; global innovation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2014.059947

International Journal of Technology Management, 2014 Vol.64 No.2/3/4, pp.276 - 302

Accepted: 13 Oct 2013
Published online: 10 May 2014 *

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