Offshore knowledge incubation (OKI) denotes the effort by foreign R&D units of MNCs to achieve local embeddedness within the host-country R&D system, even at the expense of remaining detached from the rest of the MNC. An open-ended social interaction and learning process, OKI can be seen as a...

We studied "regional innovation relays" as MNC regional offices that mediate between knowledge generation at the local level and knowledge application at the global level. The significance of the region as a nexus of innovation is illustrated by concrete examples from U.S. and Japanese MNCs. The...