In “Here or There? A Survey of Factors in Multinational R&D Location,” Professor Jerry Thursby of Emory University and Professor Marie Thursby of Georgia Tech University surveyed 250 multinational companies to see what influences their planning to site R&D facilities in their home country or overseas. (The 250 responses were from an original sample of 400).

The Thursbys were responding to a request by the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR), part of the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the National Institute of Health. They were joined on the panel by Susan Butts, Senior Director of External Science and Technology Programs at the Dow Chemical Company, and Harold Schmitz, Chief Science Advisor for Mars, Inc.

The Thursbys found that many factors went into site selection for R&D facilities – the quality of the research personal, the commitment (or failure) to enforce intellectual property rights, the potential relationship with universities, the size of the market, the prospects for growth, and the costs of establishing a facility including the wages of R& D personnel.

For the emerging market countries such as China or India, the results of their interviews emphasized the growth of the market as the key factor in establishing an R&D facility. As markets grew, R&D facilities were needed to adapt an existing product to local conditions and local consumer tastes.