Abstract
Richard Gordon's work helps us understand that globalization of innovation does not diminish competition among states, but it does make it more difficult for states to influence the distribution of innovation rents. Yet, that doesn't keep states from trying. Gordon argued that they could be more successful if they cooperated rather than competed. This article claims that, whether they intend to or not, states do cooperate even as they are competing to expand their individual economic space. The cooperation occurs through the pervasive movement of science and engineering students and graduates from less innovative economies to more innovative economies and back, generally financed directly or indirectly by public funds. Public money in countries competing to get innovative rents mainly finances students to get their first degrees at home. But it also helps finance many to go to innovation centers for advanced degrees. Public money in the innovation centers finances university research and, in turn, graduate students to be trained doing the research. An increasing number of such students are from the hopeful competitors among the NICs. When foreign students stay in the innovation centers, states are implicitly “cooperating” to finance continued innovation in countries that can provide the most advanced training; when these graduates return to the less advanced innovating countries, states are implicitly “cooperating” to finance those countries' attempts to gain larger shares of innovation rents. The graduates, trained by developed country universities largely at developed states' expense and sometimes trained further as employees in developed country high-tech firms, are the most important resource in efforts to begin innovation efforts in the NICs. They also form a political force for promoting national innovation cores. So interstitial competition begets cooperation and interstatial cooperation can also beget competition.
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