Global Firms and Knowledge Diffusion
We are pleased to announce the First Workshop on Global Firms (2025), to be held at the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy, on December 18–19, 2025.
Global firms have long leveraged their international reach to secure competitive advantages. Their production networks span national borders, and they often play a leading role in structuring global value chains. Yet one critical dimension of multinational activity remains insufficiently explored: the organization of R&D and knowledge creation.
Today, global firms account for the majority of worldwide R&D investment. However, their role in shaping technological trajectories, most notably in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), has received limited attention. This workshop aims to advance our understanding of how multinational enterprises organize innovation across borders and what this implies for the real economy.
Key questions include:
- What is the optimal organization of R&D within and across countries?
- How does participation in global value chains affect innovation?
- What are the consequences for domestic firms and national innovation systems?
- Has the pandemic and recent geopolitical conflict reshaped global firms’ location choices?
- What role do global firms play in the development of AI?
- Which trade and industrial policies should guide the future?
By bringing together senior and junior scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, this workshop seeks to foster dialogue at the frontier of research on multinational enterprises, innovation, and policy.
For further information, please visit the website.
