Exploring the position of cities in global corporate research and development: A bibliometric analysis by two different geographical approaches

Abstract

Global cities are defined, on the one hand, as the major command and control centres of the world economy and, on the other hand, as the most significant sites of the production of innovation. As command and control centres, they are home to the headquarters of the most powerful MNCs of the global economy, while as sites for the production of innovation they are supposed to be the most important sites of corporate research and development (R&D) activities. In this paper, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of the data located in the Scopus and Forbes 2000 databases to reveal the correlation between the characteristics of the above global city definitions. We explore which cities are the major control points of the global corporate R&D (home city approach), and which cities are the most important sites of corporate R&D activities (host city approach). According to the home city approach we assign articles produced by companies to cities where the decision-making headquarters are located (i.e. to cities that control the companies' R&D activities), while according to the host city approach we assign articles to cities where the R&D activities are actually conducted. Given Sassen's global city concept, we expect global cities to be both the leading home cities and host cities.The results show that, in accordance with the global city concept, Tokyo, New York, London and Paris surpass other cities as command points of global corporate R&D (having 42 percent of companies' scientific articles). However, as sites of corporate R&D activities to be conducted, New York and Tokyo form a unique category (having 28 percent of the articles). The gap between San Jose and Boston, and the global cities has consistently narrowed because the formers are the leading centres of the fastest growing innovative industries (e.g. information technology and biotechnology) in the world economy, and important sites of international R&D activities within these industries. The emerging economies are singularly represented by Beijing; however, the position of Chinese capital (i.e. the number of its companies' scientific articles), has been strengthening rapidly.

A spatial scientometric analysis of the publication output of cities worldwide

“…In tandem with the Chinese economic reforms initiated in 1978, the nation's innovation system has also been developed (Liu & White, 2001;Liu, Simon, Sun, & Cao, 2011). In that, the scientific output of universities and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have grown rapidly; moreover, companies have gradually been getting involved in the production of science (Csomós & Tóth, 2016). In the period from 2006 to 2015, eight Chinese cities produced more than 100,000 articles of the top 25 cities worldwide, while in the United States, there were only four such cities.…”

“…, and Bornmann & Leydesdorff (2012) examine whether there is a relationship between the total scientific output of cities and the number of highly cited papers published in those cities. Csomós & Tóth (2016) and Csomós (2017) explore the global position of cities in terms of corporate research and development, based on the number of scientific publications created by corporate researchers and engineers.…”

Mapping the Scientific Output of European Cities: a Spatial Scientometric Analysis Based on Scopus Data

“…Matthiessen-Schwarz (1999), van Noorden (2010), ), Bornmann-Waltman (2011 különböző szempontok alapján elvégzett elemzései megerősítik e városok kiemelkedő helyzetét. Más tanulmányok ugyanakkor arra hívják fel a figyelmet, hogy a vezető multinacionális vállalatok, különösen a kutatásintenzív iparágakban működők, szintén tekintélyes mennyiségű cikket bocsátanak ki (Halperin-Chakrabarti 1987, Hicks et al 1994, Hicks 1995, Godin 1996, Chang 2014, Csomós-Tóth 2016. A multinacionális vállalatok szervezete azonban földrajzilag sokszínűbb az egyetemekénél, hiszen a vállalatok arra törekszenek, hogy a K+F-létesítményeiket a lehető leginnovatí-vabb környezetbe telepítsék, amelyek végső soron a leghatékonyabban járulnak hozzá a szervezet tudáshasznosító képességének növeléséhez (D 'Agostino-Santangelo 2012, Gerybadze-Reger 1999, Pearce 1999, Zander 1999.…”

Mapping Spatial and Temporal Changes of Global Corporate Research and Development Activities by Conducting a Bibliometric Analysis

“…The gap between the economic performance of developed and developing countries has gradually narrowed, thanks not only to the fast economic growth of developing countries, but also to the large volume of foreign direct investments that target their corresponding R&D sector (Reddy, 2005). Several firms from developing countries have emerged as globally significant R&D investors (Hernández et al, 2015), and have themselves become major actors in global corporate R&D activities (Csomós, Tóth, 2016a).…”