The global economic environment has changed substantially over the past decades, as have the business strategies responding to emerging knowledge-based economy. In particular, radical development of information technology (IT), globalization, and an increase in the speed to market are causing more and more firms to re-examine all aspects of their business surroundings including their R&D interactions and spending as part of innovative activities.Basically, the objective of these R&D activities is to provide a business with differentiated products and systems to meet market needs and obtain new knowledge or technology, applicable to firm’'s needs, which can eventually result in new or improved products, processes, or services that can increase firms’' profits. Recently, R&D activities are being critically examined as a result of deepening specialism and the high cost of investment crucial to keep up with the pace of technological change in a variety of business areas.Generally, R&D activities conducted by firms are divided into three types: in-house production, contract-based outsourcing, or collaboration with others. While the firms as the sole owner of the know-how created have preferred in-house R&D to command their strategic advantage in the business and to protect it from unauthorized use, outsourcing R&D has become a new trend and gained more and more attention in recent years as a strategy of accelerating the pace of innovation and diversifying their technological capabilities. Therefore, driven by market needs to access new products quickly and at a lower cost, R&D outsourcing has been common for small- or medium-sized firms, and even for large multinational corporations (MNCs).Meanwhile, R&D outsourcing is one of the effective methods to implement open innovation. According to Chesbrough (2003), many innovative firms have employed R&D outsourcing using a wide range of external resources to facilitate and accomplish open innovation. Open innovation emphasizes the role of outside organizations in conducting R&D activities beside in-house R&D laboratories or departments. A survey of businesses by R&D Magazine (2007) showed that the most common type of outsourced R&D was technology. And according to the survey, business leaders outsourced R&D activities most often for component innovations, a variety of design (e.g., system, electronic, functional, cosmetic), new process or product innovations, software development, and so on (see Figure 1). Organizations outsourcing R&D work for businesses include universities, government labs, independent R&D organizations, and other companies
