Innovation in the European Union remains weak according to a number of key "input" indicators, especially R&D investment by the business sector, and there are relatively few signs of progress. From a firm-level perspective, Europe's innovation gap relative to the US results from an inappropriate...

This paper aims to shed light on firm specific drivers that lead firms to internationalise their innovation activities. The paper draws a comprehensive picture of driving forces by including firm capabilities, characteristics of the firm’s competitive environment and the influence of...

This paper discusses the diversity of mechanisms which firms can deploy to link to science and how science links are associated with their innovation performance. Using a sample of Flemish firms, we show that there exists considerable heterogeneity in the type of links to science at the firm...

The internationalisation of corporate R&D opens up the chances to participate in international knowledge sharing. This increasingly motivates firms to accelerate the pace and extent of their international R&D activities in order to enhance innovativeness and consequently competitiveness and...

Recent years have shown a surge of firms globalising their innovation activities in order to gain from international knowledge. This paper evaluates this strategy by investigating whether firms with international R&D are more innovative than firms doing R&D only in their home country. One main...

This paper aims at analysing the risk of intellectual property (IP) infringements by competitors from abroad and in particular whether this risk is higher for international innovating firms. We distinguish three different types of IP infringements from abroad: the usage of firms' technical...

This paper examines the diversity of the types of links of firms to science and their effect on innovation performance for a sample of Belgian firms. While at the industry level links to science are highly related to the R&D intensity of the sector, we show that there exists considerable...

The internationalisation of corporate R&D is an opportunity for firms to reach local knowledge and expertise which is distributed globally. Firms' innovation activities which are carried out abroad comprise either the localization of uniform products to local needs with locally available...

This paper provides some first empirical evidence on the relationship between R&D spillovers and R&D cooperation. The results suggest disentangling different aspects of know-how flows. Firms which rate incoming spillovers more importantly and who can limit outgoing spillovers by a more effective...

This paper investigates the drivers and the effects of the internationalisation of innovation activities in SMEs based on a large data set of German firms covering the period 2002-2007. We look at different stages of the innovation process (R&D, design, production and sales of new products, and...