ABSTRACT
This chapter provides descriptive evidence of the changing geography of inventive activity and the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in international research and development (R&D), with quite an extensive geographical coverage. Building on a sketched conceptual framework that links Economic Geography and International Business literature, it highlights that the geography of innovation is shaped by forces leading to increasing geographical concentration of innovative activities, benefiting from localised interactions and exchanges of knowledge. Foreign direct investment (FDI) Markets is a database produced by FDI Intelligence, a division of the Financial Times Ltd, which tracks cross-border green field investments across different industries and countries worldwide. FDI Markets is a widely used source of information for activities of MNEs around the world, both by international organisation such as the United Nation and academic researchers. The database contains projects in 17 different types of business activity which grouped into 5 categories: coordination activities, R&D-related activities, production activities, support services and advanced services.
