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Location choices within global innovation networks: the case of Europe

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Abstract

Rapid growth in internationalization of corporate R&D has spurred considerable interest since the 1990s. Foreign R&D is still mainly driven by the expansion of international production, but technology sourcing has become an increasingly important driver of dispersion. Actually, differences across sectors and companies tend to obscure the mix of motivations behind the development of global innovation networks. This paper distinguishes the various drivers of the international dispersion of corporate R&D in order to elaborate a typology of foreign R&D units, including in emerging countries. This typology is used to discuss the emergence of differentiated global innovation networks and the location choices by type of R&D unit. It is applied to foreign R&D projects in Europe in high and low cost countries between 2002 and 2005. It is then used to discuss the weakening attractiveness of the European Union for R&D activities and the relevant policies that countries can design to attract different types of units.

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Notes

  1. Recent surveys include Criscuolo (2004), Narula and Zanfei (2005), UNCTAD (2005), and Veugelers (2005).

  2. Valeo, the automobile supplier, distinguishes among its R&D activities, front-office, in contact with customers, back office and core activities (Devauchelle 2006). Front-office activities correspond to the LDCs and core activities to GRLs.

  3. Based on patent data between 1969 and 1995 Cantwell and Kosmopolou (2002) suggest that technologically strong local companies can inhibit foreign R&D investment in their industry. This result may depend on the characteristics of the national system of innovation and the degree of competition on the local market.

  4. Agence Française pour les Investissements Internationaux. Hatem (2006) gives a presentation of the data base, which includes FDI projects located in Europe from all countries of origin. A project may be a new foreign unit or an extension. Sachwald and Chassagneux (2007) further presents the FDI-RD data base.

  5. Data for 2001 (OECD 2004).

  6. Top 1% most cited publications.

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Acknowledgements

Fabrice Hatem gave me access to AFII foreign investment projects data base, which was used to build the FDI-RD base used in this paper. Edwige Chassagneux and Laetitia Zana contributed to the constitution of this data base during internships.

A previous version of this paper has been presented during a PRIME Workshop on ‘Globalisation of R&D: The Policy Dimension’ (Vienna, May 2005) and I thank the participants for their comments. I also thank the contributors to the conferences of the ANRT-IFRI program on Global Innovation Networks (www.ifri.org), which I ran when writing this article.

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  1. Head of the Industrial R&D Office, Ministry of Higher Education and Research, 1, rue Descartes, Paris Cedex 05, 75231, France

    Frédérique Sachwald

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Sachwald, F. Location choices within global innovation networks: the case of Europe. J Technol Transfer 33, 364–378 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-007-9057-8

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