Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
are early access to human capital, including the possibility
to support talent creation, and publicly funded joint research
projects, in which most of the interviewed MNEs were involved.
In such projects, the inflow of complementary knowledge from
a range of industrial and academic partners was reported to be
beneficial over and beyond the actual financial R&D incentive; (3)
Support to continuous collaboration
. All our respondents reported
difficulties in engaging with the academic community, mostly
related to its partial understanding of business and industrial R&D
processes (including its legal requirements), and to the differ-
ences in professional incentive structures: for instance academic
publication needs might interfere with confidentiality protocols,
moreover universities' specific funding requirements (needed for
example to accommodate a PhD degree) could not always be
met by MNEs. To overcome the differences in incentive struc-
tures, collaboration programmes with universities are often led
by managers with a strong academic background (usually a PhD
graduate), and try to incorporate academic incentives by, for
instance, facilitating peer review publishing. IPR management
is also critical in academic collaborations, especially concern-
ing joint IP and the temporary exclusion of competitors from the
newly created knowledge. Finally, it is acknowledged that conti-
nuity in the relationship ensures successful collaborations and,
although partnerships are firstly developed ad hoc, this is done
with the long-term objective of establishing a durable contact.
From the MNE to the region:
Although knowledge flows are
facilitated by geographical proximity, MNEs are not spatially con-
strained in their choice of partners and, indeed, in the majority
of cases, they do not explicitly differentiate among regional and
global collaborators. Nevertheless, the need of spatial proximity
in specific types of collaborations has strongly influenced, if not
driven, the R&D investment strategy of some MNEs. Those firms
with a decentralized R&D infrastructure have in fact devised their
strategy on the basis of the local availability of a critical mass of
other innovative public and private actors. As such, they have
built research facilities in different areas across the world, in
close proximity to local universities and research centres. For
instance, one of the ICT firms based its R&D centres in outstand-
ing engineering campuses worldwide and developed joint PhD
programs with the university. Other firms, across sectors and
