IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/08-009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why are companies offshoring innovation ?the emerging global race for talent

Author

Listed:
  • Arie Lewin
  • Silvia Massini
  • Carine Peeters

Abstract

This paper empirically studies the determinants of firms’ decision to offshore product development activities (i.e. R&D, product design and engineering services). A logit model is estimated using survey data from the Offshoring Research Network on offshore implementations initiated by US firms between 1990 and 2006. It relates the probability of offshoring product development to differences in companies’ strategic objectives (managerial intentionality), past experience (path dependence), and in environmental factors. The results show that offshoring of product development is partially explained by the emerging shortage of high skilled technical talent in the US, which drives the need to access talent globally. The data also suggest that firms use offshore cost savings opportunities to improve the efficiency of the innovation process, although not through labor arbitrages. Finally, increasing speed to market is another major reason underlying product development offshoring decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Arie Lewin & Silvia Massini & Carine Peeters, 2008. "Why are companies offshoring innovation ?the emerging global race for talent," Working Papers CEB 08-009, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
  • Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:08-009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/9135/1/cp-0049.pdf
    File Function: cp-0049
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    offshoring; innovation; product development; global talent.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:sol:wpaper:08-009. 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: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebulbe.html .

    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.