The Industrial Performance Center is engaged in a major research program on the process of globalization and its implications for productivity growth, innovation and the creation of good jobs.

The interdisciplinary IPC research team is tracking the effects of globalization on individual firms and their home societies in several industries, such as: electronics, (including semiconductors), software, financial services (including venture capital), motor vehicles, and textiles and apparel. With the help of an international network of collaborating researchers, we are studying the strategies, plants and laboratories of leading firms in each of these industries with home bases in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Taiwan.

By comparing the different ways in which firms are relocating their productive activities abroad, we can shed new light on how alternative globalization strategies will affect future innovation, growth, job content and skills, and societal learning.

In the latest phase of this research, we are collaborating with a team at the University of California, Berkeley on a National Survey of Globalization, Innovation, and Employment. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this project is collecting and analyzing new data from U.S. organizations on global engagement, use of technology, and innovation activity. We expect that the results of this research will make it possible to go beyond recent estimates of the number of American jobs that are potentially offshorable, and will provide a systematic understanding of what firms and other organizations are actually doing in regard to both outsourcing and offshoring.