Abstract
This paper investigates the overseas R&D activities of Japanese MNEs (NEC Corp. and Canon Inc.) by using bibliometric data of their overseas R&D laboratories. Our results generally agree with the results of previous research, while Japanese MNEs has developed their overseas R&D activities during the 1990s. However our findings indicate that overseas R&D activities of Japanese MNEs has been making change from the year 2000. In NEC's overseas R&D laboratories not only the number of published papers show a tendency to decrease after 2000 but also their overseas international joint R&D activities are reducing. At the same time, it seems that Canon changed a patent application policy regarding their overseas R&D activities. Our results may indicate that overseas R&D activities by Japanese MNEs are in a hard phase both evolutionally and operationally.
