Networks and Globalization (Sponsored Research Project)

Research and Event Summaries

Project Abstract

For three years, Professors Rycroft and Vonortas have team-taught a capstone graduate course, IAFF 229, organized around the topic of "The Globalization of Technology: Evidence and Implications." The courses have focused on major indicators of globalization (trade, foreign investment, research and development, patenting, and international inter-organizational cooperative agreements) and how they relate to technological innovation. One result has been a striking realization: while globalization seems to have made technological innovation more "networked," there is great uncertainty about how to systematically capture this effect (international networking) in our data and our theories. We know a good deal less about international cooperative agreements in technological innovation than any of the other globalization indicators. In April 1998, The Economist, for example, reported that some 32,000 new business alliances had been formed since 1995. Some 75 percent of them crossed national boundaries. But we know little about these alliances. This project will study innovation network formation and structure and will derive relevant indicators from large databases of cooperative agreements. In doing so, we will investigate competing theories I the globalization literature: (1) collaboration as a strategic weapon in national and regional competitiveness; (2) international networks undercutting national innovation systems by promoting cross-border linkages; and (3) networks as a phenomenon in their own right—a distinct form of technological organization that transcends nations and markets.

Faculty

Robert Rycroft (PI), Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Nicholas S. Vonortas, Associate Professor, Department of Economics

Events

Global Corporations vs. Global NGOs: Who's Driving Globalization?
Globalization Brown Bag

Publications

Technology-Based Globalization Indicators: The Centrality Of Innovation Network Data
Occasional Paper, CSGOP-02-09

Self-Organizing Innovation Networks: Implications for Globalization
Occasional Paper, CSGOP-03-16

The GW Center for the Study of Globalization
2033 K Street, NW, Suite 230 • Washington, DC 20052 • Phone: (202) 994-5206 • Fax: (202) 994-5284
Email: gwcsg@gwu.edu • http://gstudynet.org/