DCL WORKSHOP: ICES-GMU Workshop on Internationalization & Competitiveness

George Mason University, Fairfax VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a workshop (on internationalization and its competitive impacts) to be hosted at George Mason University in Arlington VA in early 2013, responsive to the Dear Colleague Letter (12-010) on Describing the Conduct of Science in the Information Age. The workshop is organized around two academic themes: the measurement of the extent of internationalization of research groups (university departments, corporate R&D facilities, etc.) and the linkages between these measures of internationalization and the competitive performance of the research groups' sponsors (e.g., the results of university technology-transfer departments, overall company performance, etc.). Although both internationalization and performance are justifiably seen to be generally desirable, both workshop themes, of the proper metric of internationalization and the competitive implications, are important and unstudied at the level required to make scientific policy recommendations. Basic and easy-to-collect measures, such as the percentage of a given patent's named inventors who were born outside the USA, do not capture the international collaborations among multiple research groups that lead to truly breakthrough innovations. Broader impacts: Linking this measure of internationalization with competitive performance is an essential precursor to creating innovation policy related to internationalization in the US and elsewhere; while a number of social-science theories predict a generally positive statistical relationship between international collaborative activity and competitive performance, measurement difficulties on the independent internationalization variables have made it difficult to make policy recommendations based on the simple correlational studies done to date. The workshop's invitees combine capabilities for metric creation and evaluation, expertise on the intellectual property development process, international collaborations, and the causal drivers of competitive performance. The international component of this workshop, in addition to the focus on the competitive implications of internationalization, includes direct collaborations with research colleagues in Sweden. The Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) provided support for this international component and joint support for the involvement of junior faculty members and doctoral candidates.