The globalisation of technology: what remains of the product cycle model?

This paper reexamines two hypotheses associated with earlier versions of the product cycle model. The first hypothesis, that innovations are almost always located in the home country of the parent company, is rejected on the basis of evidence drawn from one hundred years of U.S. Patent Office data. The second hypothesis, that the international dispersion of activity is led by technology leaders, is historically valid. However, over the last twenty years, technology leaders have been ahead instead in the globalization of technology--that is, in developing internal international networks to exploit the locationally differentiated potential of foreign centers of excellence. (c) 1995 Academic Press, Inc. Copyright 1995 by Oxford University Press.