Patterns of internationalization of corporate technology: location vs. home country advantages

摘要

Given the trends towards increasing globalization of markets and of production, the globalization of technology remains a subject of considerable interest to analysts and policy makers in the 1900s. This paper provides some new empirical observations for debate and discussion on the patterns of technological activities of large firms outside their home countries. It is based a systematic analysis of the US patenting activities of 220 of the most internationalized firms in terms of their technology in the 1990s. Although firms are active outside their home countries in the `high technology' fields (such as Computers, Pharmaceuticals, Telecommunications, Image and Sound and Materials), quite a sizeable proportion of their foreign activities are concerned with process and machinery technologies. Moreover, a comparison of the technological advantage of the company at home and the advantage of the location shows that in a large majority of cases, firms tend to locate their technology abroad in their core areas where they are strong at home. These results suggest that adapting products and processes and materials to suit foreign markets and providing of technical support to off-shore manufacturing plants remain major factors underlying the internationalization of technology. They are also consistent with the notion that firms are increasingly countries within their areas of existing strength. However there is little evidence to suggest that even these most internationalized firms routinely go abroad to compensate for their weakness at home.