FEARLESSLY SWIMMING UPSTREAM TO RISKY WATERS: THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHIC ENTRY IN INNOVATION CURBA MORRIS LAMPERT College of Business 11200 S.W. 8th Street Florida International University Miami, FL 33199 E-Mail:
[email protected] Tel: (305) 348-4929 MINYOUNG KIM School of Business 1654 Naismith Drive University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045 E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: (785) 864-1856 TIMOTHY DAVID HUBBARD Mendoza College of Business 352 Mendoza College of Business University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: (574) 631-0802 RAJA ROY Martin Tuchman School of Management 4025 Central Avenue Building New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJ 07102 E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: (973) 596-5854 GEORGE LECKIE Centre for Multilevel Modelling Graduate School of Education 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol University of Bristol United Kingdom BS8 1JA E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: 0044 117 33 14215 We appreciate the insightful comments and suggestions from Guest Editor Reddi Kotha, the three anonymous reviewers, and our colleagues including Sharon Alvarez, Rajshree Agarwal, Sekou Bermiss, Laura Cardinal, Connie Helfat, Arun Kumaraswamy, Sumner La Croix, Gideon Markman, Chet Miller, Will Mitchell, Francisco Polidoro, Frank Rothaermel, Melissa Schilling, Deepak Somaya, PK Toh, Chris Tucci, Fred Walumbwa, Brian Wu, and Ed Zajac. We especially thank David Teece and Alain Verbeke. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by their respective institutions. FEARLESSLY SWIMMING UPSTREAM TO RISKY WATERS: THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHIC ENTRY IN INNOVATION ABSTRACT We examine the puzzling geographic pattern that shows firms entering countries with weak intellectual property rights (IPR) protection with their research and development (R&D) activities.