During the past decade, multinational companies (MNCs) have made radical institutional changes: instead of generating research and development (R&D) knowledge solely in central laboratories in home countries, they have shifted their strategy to developing the capability to absorb and utilize cutting-edge technologies worldwide. Based on over 80 interviews with mainly electronics and pharmaceutical companies in Europe, Japan and the United States, this presentation addresses the question: How have MNCs developed their capability to evaluate, internalize, and utilize external R&D knowledge from abroad? Still a work in progress, this research provides an understanding of the evolutionary process of internationalization of R&D as well as the various strategies of Japanese and European high technology MNCs to absorb new technologies from US and Europe.

Biography: Seiko Arai is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, UK, and currently a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University. She obtained a bachelor's degree in law and political science from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and a Masters in public policy from Harvard University. She has worked for the Japanese government and the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), France, in the areas of science and technology and education policies.