"The great research and development laboratories of the twentieth century have been downsized, broken up, or redirected to new purposes in the West, while new labs are springing up overseas in large countries such as India and China, as well as small countries such as Finland and Israel. Companies are shortening their time horizons for research and development expenses and are shifting money from "R" to "D". Fears of outsourcing high-wage jobs to low-cost centers around the world dominate many discussions of economic and trade policy. In many parts of the western innovation system, the future of innovation has clearly changed."

- Henry Chesbrough, Open Business Models:
How to Thrive in the Innovation Landscape,2006

A 2006 survey by the Conference Board found that two-thirds of the business leaders surveyed placed global competitiveness and innovation as their #2 and #3 policy challenges. And, studies by the National Academies highlight the need for the United States to pay attention to the innovation policy experiments underway in other advanced economies of Europe, Canada, and East Asia – to remain competitive in the emerging global competitive landscape. Clearly, globalization, competitiveness, and innovation have been rising up to the top of top management agendas in both business and government in the current decade. And, yet, there is no clear consensus on how individual firms and regional and national governments should go about becoming more innovative – and more globally competitive.

The reasons for the current status of innovation are not hard to find. The cost and complexity of innovation itself have risen many fold, making it imperative for organizations to cut costs and adopt new innovation models. The growth of emerging markets has brought forth new competitors into the global arena, and new customers, making it imperative for firms to localize their products and services to serve local markets, necessitating the establishment of R&D footprints (and manufacturing and marketing facilities) in those markets. There have been endemic talent shortages in domestic markets, while there is growing recognition that talent and intellect are widely distributed around the world – now made accessible through globalization and technological advances.

In response to these new global realities, companies have lately been disaggregating their R&D activities and distributing innovation processes to offshore sites, strategic partners, and global networks. They are not just offshoring R&D to their own offshore facilities, but also outsourcing them to "partners" overseas. Some have been adopting open innovation models that allow them to leverage multiple sources of creative ideas, from university partnerships to reverse auctions, and performing the different stages of the R&D process wherever they can be most efficiently performed.

Companies, however, face business and management challenges in their search for innovation, including loss of control over R&D, theft of intellectual property, and moral hazard on the part of external partners. They also face the same business and management challenges that affect all international business and offshored/outsourced operations, such as time zones, currency fluctuations, working with multinational teams, and cross-cultural and logistical issues.

Senior executives and top scholars from the innovation/technology/globalization domains will explore and discuss these and related issues at the Innovation and Globalization Conference. They will present cutting-edge thinking on such topics as:

• The roles of the federal government, industry, and universities in innovation
• Innovation, competitiveness, and globalization
• Open innovation models and global innovation networks
• Corporate venture capital and innovation
• Innovation in government
• Innovation and economic development
• Meeting the challenge of innovation