The Internationalization of Corporate R&D

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CORPORATE R&DFigure 5-4 World shares of USPTO ICT patenting, by priority and inventor.5,04,54,03,53,02,52,01,51,00,50,019741976197819801982198419861988199019921994199619982000Australia Canada Denmark FinlandIreland Korea Netherlands Sw edenSource: OECD Patent Database.5.4 ICT Innovation SystemEfficient innovation systems are of critical importance to national technological capabilitiesand long-term economic competitiveness. The innovation-systems perspectivefocuses on generally complex sets of relationships among actors, such as companies,universities and research institutes that develop technology and innovations. Innovationsystems are understood in this study as:The flows of technology and information among people, companies and other organizationsin innovation processes, including the institutional incentives for andinteractions between actors of importance in turning ideas into new value addinggoods, services or processes (OECD 1997). 1111 Innovation systems have been defined slightly differently by different researchers and organizations. Thedefinition used here is based on the OECD definition from 1997 in OECD (1997). It is not, however,identical to the OECD definition. The main difference is that our definition explicitly includes “institutions”as the “rules-of-the-game” generating incentives for different actors. Our definition also emphasizes the“value adding” aspect of innovation.140