Extract

In a world where the tension between “national systems of innovation” (NSIs) and “transnational technology” (Nelson and Rosenberg 1993) has increased so much, that it is necessary to rephrase questions about local interactions between firms, farms, and universities across the world, interactions might be seen within a context shaped by the beginnings of a global innovation system. Throughout the whole research process, our teams found diverse indications of the importance of international flows and connections. Eun et al. (Chapter 4, this book) show the links between recently formed start-up companies and foreign universities – probably indicating the recent links between foreign-trained young Chinese scientists and their former supervisors and departments. In Thailand, foreign-owned suppliers are the third most important external source of collaboration for product innovation (Intarakumnerd and Schiller 2009, p. 562), and a global player like Seagate “set up a joint training programme with five Thai universities” (Intarakumnerd and Schiller 2009, p. 578). In Malaysia, our research team surveyed 150 firms from the electronics sector, in which 53.7% are foreign-owned firms (Rasiah and Govindaraju 2009, p. 536, and personal communication with the authors, 10 May 2013). Kruss et al. (2012, p. 527) mention how in South Africa the contact of biotechnology firms is mainly with foreign firms. Adeoti et al. (2010, p. 102) describe how Nestlé in Nigeria works with the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB) and contributes to its improvement.