The name was coined in 2013 by China’s President Xi Jinping, who drew inspiration from the concept of the Silk Road established during the Han Dynasty 2,000 years ago – an ancient network of trade routes that connected China to the Mediterranean via Eurasia for centuries.
The BRI comprises a trans-continental passage, the Silk Road Economic Belt, and a sea route.
The BRI is the subject of an R&D Management Special Issue looking at the knowledge flows facilitated by the initiative and the role of R&D in commercialising the ideas:
The New Silk Road: R&D Networks, Knowledge Diffusions, and Open Innovation. The authors are Jin Chen, Tsinghua University; Alberto Di Minin, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna; Tim Minshall, University of Cambridge; and Yu-Shan Su, National Taiwan Normal University.
The special issue aims to develop an analytical framework to study the BRI based on six research articles focused around three different topics.
- Innovation catch-up opportunities enabled by the BRI
- New collaboration models of BRI
- New technology-transfer practices of BRI.
These three research topics form the key dimensions for studying the BRI in this SI. On R&D Today we review two of the papers: –
Boundary spanning roles in cross-border university-industry collaboration: the case of Chinese multinational corporations – Simone Corsi, Xiaolan Fu, and Cintia Külzer-Sacilotto
Open innovation with Chinese characteristics: a dynamic capabilities perspective – Henry Chesbrough, Sohvi Heaton, Liang Mei
