Kerstin Schaefer joined the LSE Department of Geography and Environment as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in October 2021 with her EU-financed Project “Disconnected research and development: The (temporary) spatial patterns of innovation” (DISCO). For the project, she works together with Prof Riccardo Crescenzi on analysing the intra-firm organization of global knowledge flows using patent data indicators.
She completed her PhD in Economic Geography in 2020 at the Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography of Leibniz University Hannover. During her PhD, she spend time as a visiting fellow at University of California Los Angeles, the Universiteit Utrecht and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems und Innovation Research ISI. Her thesis titled “Competitiveness through R&D internationalization - Patent- and interview data based studies on a latecomer in the telecommunications industry” analyses the role of experienced inventors at Huawei Technology’s offshore labs for building innovation capability in the firm. Her research has been spanning boundaries between Economic Geography and International Business Studies.
Her findings emphasize the importance of participation in global industry standards for emerging region firms’ competitiveness. For her project “Standardization of Automated Driving Technologies - An Opportunity for Market Entry of Emerging Regions?” she received a Leibniz Young Investigator Grant by the Leibniz University Hannover to investigate barriers to participation in standards for emerging region firms, in particular from China.
