The Internationalization of Corporate R&D

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CORPORATE R&DAs noted above, the economic competitiveness of the Swedish ICT industry has beenstrongly based on a highly competitive technological performance in the telecommunicationsfield. This was based on an international comparison of very large corporate R&Dinvestments in telecommunication technologies. As telecommunications was one of themost rapidly growing global industrial segments of the 1990s, the Swedish ICT industrystrongly benefited from the growth of global markets for ICT goods and services.In Sweden, as in all the other major ICT-producing countries in the world, public-privatepartnerships and public investments in ICT R&D and education has played animportant role in the fostering of national ICT competitiveness. However, the publicprivaterelationships in the evolution of ICT competitiveness are based on unique andimportant national features in the leading ICT-producing nations.An important reason for the high corporate R&D investments in Sweden has been thedevelopment of long-term, public-private development blocks with a strong focus ontechnological development. At the core of these blocks have, in several cases, been apublic procuring agency or company, and a private, nationally-owned industrial groupdeveloping and delivering technological solutions. These development blocks havebeen highly driven by public needs of varying kinds, particularly within different infrastructuralareas (Figure 5-5).143