Techno-Globalisierung

Multinational enterprises increasingly internationalize collaterally to their production and sales also their research and development activities. In the media, this growing generation, transfer and diffusion of technology was labeled as technological globalization or techno-globalization - a catchword that was also adopted in the scientific literature. This paper consistently analyses global technological cooperation and global acquisitions of innovations as facets of techno-globalization with patent indicators proposed by Guellec/von Pottelsberghe de la Potterie (2001). Additionally to stocktaking for the cross section of the OECD countries and a time series examination for the whole OECD, Germany and the Netherlands, the significant drivers of techno-globalization are determined by simple correlation and regression analyses. Furthermore, simple tests for beta-convergence show that there are an international convergence of the patent shares with domestic inventor and foreign applicant and also a convergence of the countries' patent shares with international cooperation of inventors. The analysis is completed by a view on the sector differences with regard to the internationalization of innovations as well as by some considerations with regard to the links between the internationalization of enterprises' innovations and domestic employment.