An exploration of Swedish companies' offshoring of R&D activities to China

Paper in proceeding, 2010

A trend among manufacturing companies is offshoring of R & D. The aim of this study is to investigate Swedish companies' offshoring of R & D activities to China, utilizing both a survey and explorative case studies. The survey results show that 9% of the companies have offshored R & D to China, that performance in China is satisfactory, primarily in terms of costs, and that there is a need for strong integration mechanisms to handle coordination and information sharing. Based on the case studies, a categorization of firms offshoring R & D into Market- & Talent-driven firms and Low-cost & Supplydriven firms is proposed, as these have different challenges and require different managerial solutions. Finally, a dilemma concerning information sharing and innovation is identified and discussed. © 2010 IEEE.