Introduction

Rapidly changing conditions in the world economy force firms, regions and countries to innovate and diversify in order to maintain their competitive advantages (Pyka and Hanusch 2006; Hartmann 2014). While local or company internal research and development (R&D) activities are important, no single firm can keep pace with the current speed of technological development in isolation. For this reason accessing external knowledge and actively engaging in international innovation networks becomes crucial (Pyka and Scharnhorst 2010). Recently, several large developing and emerging countries like Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, India or China have been able to diversify their economies and initiate a technological catch-up process. In this process, international investment, migrant diasporas and innovation networks have played an important role. At the same time, the European Union has emphasized the need to become the most dynamic know ledge based economy in the world to create more and better jobs. An important issue to achieve this goal is the mobility of knowledge, which emphasizes the role of cultural diversity and interactive learning. However, few studies so far have scrutinized the international innovation networks and knowledge migration between European Member states and EU Member candidates like the emerging economy of Turkey.