The Internationalization of Corporate R&D

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CORPORATE R&Dcustomer company itself uses to select candidates for interviews and finalselection. Member companies pay an annual fee to YourEncore and are charged aservice fee for each retiree placement (Kostrzewa).The number of retirees in YourEncore’s network has doubled during the last year.According to Mike Kostrzewa, Executive Vice President at YourEncore, retired researchersin the U.S. would like to stay productive and have much knowledge to contribute.All retirees at YourEncore live in the U.S. and 35 percent come from threemember companies – P&G, Eli Lilly and Boeing. Initially, YourEncore’s focus was inthe chemical sector, but today more and more engineers from other areas join the network.The company actively recruits retirees in new fields and tries to identify industriesthat will be affected by large retirements.YourEncore works with trade organizations and it believes that the company is growingat a good pace. Anyone can join the network, and they become an employee ofYourEncore when they get an assignment. The retirees receive all benefits from Your-Encore and are paid a professional fee based on their exit salary (Kostrzewa).The retirees are mostly needed within development, commercialization and projectmanagement. YourEncore is not typically used for early stages of research. Retireeswork either on-site or remotely, depending on the nature of the project, and they areprimarily hired for short-term assignments that last an average of 21 days. Sometimesretirees will work for their previous employers. According to Kostrzewa, YourEncorehas a 100 percent success rate of project deliverable accomplishment, which is explainedby the fact that the retirees will not take the assignment if they are not sure thatthey can solve it. All solutions belong to the member company (Kostrzewa).YourEncore has 12 full-time employees and is located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thecompany expects that demand will continue to grow during the coming years. Your-Encore has no presence abroad.7.5 Marketplace for Patents and LicensesTrade with patents and licenses is another part of the new innovation market. The marketvalue is estimated to be 100 billion dollars and is growing rapidly (yet2.com 2005).Transaction costs of this trade are normally high for companies but the internet allowslower cost and an easier search. Patents within a company may be licensed to othercompanies and generate incomes.According to the General Patent Corporation International, only a small percentage of allpatents in the U.S. are commercialized (Lerner). yet2.com is an intellectual property shop– an external organization that helps customer companies exploit their intellectual capital.176