The Internationalization of Corporate R&D

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CORPORATE R&DFigure 5-3 Corporate R&D investments in the ICT industry, 1981–2003.1,41,21,00,80,60,40,20,01981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003Source: OECD, MSTI 2005.Australia Canada Denmark FinlandIreland Korea Netherlands Sw edenTechnological capabilities are fundamental to innovation processes, and R&D investmentsare critical to technological development. Inventions are major results of R&Dinvestments. They thus represent important components of technological performanceand economic competitiveness.Exact measurements of the technological performance of an economy are impossible toobtain, since technology and knowledge are essentially intangible assets. However, importantinventions often generate intellectual property that is protected in the form ofpatents. Patenting activity can thus be one important indicator of invention performance. 8Patented inventions have a particularly strong correlation with R&D investments, asleading R&D-invested companies strongly dominate in terms of patenting (Marklund etal. 2004, p. 28).8 Comparable data on copyrights, trademarks and other important intellectual property rights measurementsare very difficult to obtain, despite their increasing importance in service invention and innovation, whichrepresent large and increasing shares of all innovations in modern economies.138