International R&D Strategies in Companies from Developing Countries - the Case of China

Traditionally, international R&D is a phenomenon of firms originating from advanced countries such as North America, Europe, and Japan. Based on the analysis of 1269 R&D locations, a new research framework is proposed that accounts for the increasing share of R&D toward or from developing countries. Investigating technology-intensive Chinese firms, motivations, strategies, and barriers to R&D internationalization are analyzed. The paper proposes two concepts of international R&D: "innovation capability enhancing" and "innovation capability exploiting", respectively, denoting superimposed networks that allow the absorption and implementation of new technologies.

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