過去在跨國企業研發國際化之文獻中，主要都是以已開發國家爲主要研究對象。然而2005年聯合國貿易暨發展會議之「世界投資報告」指出：開發中國家跨國企業研發國際化正在快速成長。這個現象雖開啟了各界對開發中國家跨國企業研發國際化之重視，但由於中國快速發展之故，絕大多數焦點仍集中在前往中國大陸設置研發中心議題上，較少觀察其他開發中國家之跨國企業，尤其研發國際化長期演進過程之研究仍付之闕如。爲補足上述之研究缺口，本研究透過資料蒐集與深度訪談，以瞭解台灣前1000大製造業中資訊電子業跨國企業之海外研發布局，並解讀開發中國家跨國企業研發國際化四種路徑態樣之意涵。接著，透過訪談高階主管了解研發國際化各種態樣之技術發展策略。本研究比較不同策略與不同產業別的經營績效發現：視需要彈性地選擇開發中國家或已開發國家去設立海外研發中心的公司，其平均經營績效比堅持只到已開發國家或開發中國家的公司爲佳；而從產業別來比較，系統業、通信電子業與光學業有較佳的平均經營績效，零組件業與其他電子業居次，而半導體業最差。此研究成果可提供開發中國家跨國企業布局全球研發據點之參考。

The internationalization of research and development (R&D) recently has become a considerable interest to practitioners and researchers. Numbers of prior studies have examined several issues of foreign direct R&D investments. Unfortunately, literature in this area has mainly contributed to the knowledge of R&D internationalization of the advanced countries. There are only a few studies that have investigated R&D internationalization from the developing countries. However, developing countries are connecting to global knowledge networks and foreign R&D activities by transnational corporations (TNCs) from developing countries are fast growing. To enrich the literature of R&D internationalization, this study investigates the paths of overseas R&D establishments of a developing country in the past two decades. Based on the data from 62 information and electronic firms out of the top 1000 Taiwanese manufacturers, we examine how these TNCs establish their overseas R&D centers to connect with the global innovation networks. The unit of analysis is TNCs that have wholly-owned overseas R&D centers. We find four patterns for the path of R&D internationalization from Taiwanese TNCs. Through in-depth interviews with top managements, we explore three R&D technology strategies for R&D internationalization. Finally, we compare the average financial performance indices by technology strategy and type of industry. We find that the firms insist on merely establishing R&D centers in the developed countries or in the developing countries gained a worse average financial performance, and those firms that kept flexibility on the location decision performed better. Industry-wise comparison shows that system, communication and optoeletronic industries gained a better financial performance, component and other electronic industries performed worse, and semiconductor industry had the worst performance. The results provide some insights to those TNCs who are planning to globally extend their R&D activities from the developing countries, and give valuable inputs to the governmental sector in policy-making.