Right Person at the Right Place: How IPR at the Host Location Influences the Internal Division of Innovative Labor in Multinational Enterprises

The internationalization of R&D activity by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is increasing, with a recent big push towards emerging economies. Understanding how MNEs organize collaborative R&D across geographies is therefore an important area of scholarship. However, little attention has been paid towards understanding the factors that influence the division of innovative labor within an MNE across geographies – the internal division of innovative labor. Drawing on the literature that shows that strong protection for intellectual property (IP) is important for the efficient division of innovative labor between firms, we argue and show that differences in effectiveness of IP protection between international locations significantly influences the internal division of innovative labor, especially for R&D aimed at the host market when compared to R&D aimed at the home market.