An analysis of overseas R&D activities of Japanese manufacturing firms

Summary form only given. This study examines overseas R&D activities of large Japanese manufacturing firms, by interviews and questionnaire survey from their subsidiaries located in the US, Europe and Asia. The study also constructs hypotheses from a “communication” viewpoint. Based on the interviews, the paper proposes the following hypotheses for further data collection: (1) the more frequent the communication among R&D personnel in overseas R&D subsidiaries, the higher overseas R&D productivity; (2) the more frequent the communication between overseas R&D subsidiaries and overseas manufacturing/marketing subsidiaries, the higher overseas R&D productivity; and (3) the more frequent the communication among overseas R&D subsidiaries and domestic R&D laboratories, the higher global R&D productivity