Technological internationalisation in the electro-technical industry: a cross-company comparison of patenting patterns 1986-2000

This paper addresses the issue of R&D internationalisation of two multinationals in the electro-technical industry (GE and ABB), by means of a patent data analysis. The overwhelming majority of both companies’ R&D activities are concentrated in Western Europe and North America. The locational overlap between the two firms’ activities is small. These results are consistent with findings from earlier studies that (1) there is little evidence to suggest that the ‘production’ of technology is globalised in a general sense and (2) that tapping knowledge from an industry's global lead location plays a very limited role in foreign R&D investments.