R&D offshoring and firm's innovativeness: The role of firms', regional, and sectoral characteristics

Abstract

In my research, R&D offshoring is the central area of work about which I have built my thesis. Even though not a recent strategy, firms have recently realized about the importance of accessing to others’ knowledge in order to survive, grow, or approximate to leadership. The objective of this thesis is, first, to study how foreign knowledge may have a differential effect on the firms’ innovative processes depending on the type of agent (knowledge coming from private or public institutions from abroad), as well as on the economic cycle (comparing the pre-crisis period with respect to the crisis one started in 2008). Second, through the perspective of the Economics of Innovation and Regional Economics fields, try to understand how the regional knowledge environment might affect the relation between networking strategies and firms’ innovative performance, and to evaluate how the regional stakeholder’s knowledge affect this relationship. Finally, investigate what effect does it have the externalities coming from R&D offshoring, and its possible social benefit for the firms in a given sector. That is, to study the aggregate effect of the sectoral level of R&D offshoring on firms’ innovative performance.