IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ete/msiper/488695.html

Do technology leaders deter inward R&D investments? Evidence from regional R&D location decisions in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Rene Belderbos
  • Dieter Somers

Abstract

Leading technology intensive firms have incentives to protect knowledge outflows to collocated firms in order to enhance the returns to R&D (Alcácer and Zhao, 2012). In this paper we argue that leading firms’ knowledge protection strategies are likely to discourage other firms from setting up new R&D establishments in their vicinity. Knowledge protection is facilitated by an R&D organization emphasizing internal knowledge flows drawing on complementary contributions by dispersed R&D units. We examine whether the presence and R&D organization of local technology leaders discourages inward R&D investments in an analysis of the (NUTS-1) regional location of 196 cross-border R&D investment projects in EU-15 countries during 2003-2008. While the strength of the local relevant technology clusters attracts inward R&D investments, investors are generally discouraged by the concentration of technology activities due to the presence of regional technology leaders in the industry. This discouraging effect occurs specifically in case the leaders exhibit an internally oriented R&D organization drawing on cross-border intra-firm knowledge flows in their technology development activities. Our study challenges the common notion in the literature on clusters and innovation that agglomeration is generally associated with greater knowledge spillovers.

Suggested Citation

  • Rene Belderbos & Dieter Somers, 2015. "Do technology leaders deter inward R&D investments? Evidence from regional R&D location decisions in Europe," Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven 488695, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven.
    • Handle: RePEc:ete:msiper:488695
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/f2deba50-023a-43f5-b9f8-47e32e4886f4
    File Function: MSI_1505
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Heidi Olander & Pia Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, 2015. "Proactive Hrm For Reducing Knowledge Risks — Evaluating Commitment And Trustworthiness," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(06), pages 1-20, December.
    3. Bollmann, Tobias, 2018. "Unternehmensgründungen und Hochschulen: Eine Analyse der Bedeutung von universitärer Entrepreneurship-Bildung und Clustermitgliedschaften auf regionale Unternehmensgründungen," Arbeitspapiere 180, University of Münster, Institute for Cooperatives.
    4. Mark Vancauteren & Ahmed Boutorat & Oscar Lemmers, 2024. "Import Competition, Destinations, and Firms’ Patent Strategies," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 4284-4314, March.
    5. Damioli, Giacomo & Marin, Giovanni, 2024. "The effects of foreign entry on local innovation by entry mode," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    6. Nasirov, Shukhrat & Gokh, Irina & Filippaios, Fragkiskos, 2022. "Technological radicalness, R&D internationalization, and the moderating effect of intellectual property protection," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 215-227.
    7. Luca Colombo & Herbert Dawid & Philipp Harting, 2024. "R&D location in dynamic industry environments," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 41-62.
    8. Belderbos, René & Lee, Geon Ho & Mudambi, Ram & Du, Helen S. & Somers, Dieter, 2024. "When does international knowledge connectivity of global cities attract R&D investments? The role of concentrated ownership through organizational pipelines," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(9).
    9. René Belderbos & Jinhyuck (Joseph) Park & Martin Carree, 2021. "Do R&D investments in weak IPR countries destroy market value? The role of internal linkages," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(8), pages 1401-1431, August.
    10. Filip De Beule & Dieter Somers & Haiyan Zhang, 2018. "Who Follows Whom? A Location Study of Chinese Private and State-Owned Companies in the European Union," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 43-84, February.
    11. Peter J Buckley & Liang Chen & L Jeremy Clegg & Hinrich Voss, 2018. "Risk propensity in the foreign direct investment location decision of emerging multinationals," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 49(2), pages 153-171, February.
    12. René Belderbos & Davide Castellani & Helen S. Du & Geon Ho Lee, 2024. "Internal versus external agglomeration advantages in investment location choice: The role of global cities’ international connectivity," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 55(6), pages 745-763, August.
    13. Boeing, Philipp & Mueller, Elisabeth, 2019. "Measuring China's patent quality: Development and validation of ISR indices," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ete:msiper:488695. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: library EBIB (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://feb.kuleuven.be/MSI .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.