Mapping Spatial and Temporal Changes of Global Corporate Research and Development Activities by Conducting a Bibliometric Analysis

Corporate research and development (R&D) activities have long been highly concentrated in a handful of world cities. This is due to the fact that these cities (e.g., Tokyo, New York, London, and Paris) are home to the largest and most powerful transnational corporations and are globally important sites for innovative start-up firms that operate in the fastest growing industries. However, in tandem with the rapid technological changes of our age, corporate R&D activities have shifted towards newly emerging and now globally significant R&D centres, like San Jose, San Francisco, and Boston in the United States, and Beijing, Seoul, and Shenzhen in East Asia. In this paper, I will conduct a bibliometric analysis to define which cities are centres of corporate R&D activities, how different industries influence their performance, and what spatial tendencies characterise the period from 1980 to 2014. The bibliometric analysis is based upon an assumption that implies there is a close connection between the number of scientific articles published by a given firm and the volume of its R&D activity.