he CICALICS-2016 Workshop aims to link scholars and research groups on learning, innovation and competence building for development in China with international research communities. Cicalics provides a platform to discuss the challenges and opportunities of the industrial transition process facing Chinese companies and China at large. These challenges and opportunities include the dynamics achieved through global engagement and collaboration with MNEs and internationalization of R&D, including acquisition of R&D facilities abroad.

The theme of Cicalics 2016 is:

Innovation at Local, National & Global Levels in a Collaboration Perspective

This year, we would like to put more emphasis on collaboration,. Collaboration, which takes many forms, seems to be a key word for innovative performance and constitutes an essential part of  both innovation theories and practices. Just to mention a few examples, all the following constructs entail collaboration: R&D-teams, network, interaction, Triple Helix, strategic alliance, user-producer interaction, open innovation, etc.

Cicalics is an open forum with room for a wide set of topics related to learning, innovation and competences. Furthermore the Cicalics forum also welcomes other innovation related topics. For example, in recent years, a set of initiatives have been launched in China and many of them aim to develop an innovation driven China. In Cicalics 2016 we welcome innovation related papers that study and bring these new initiatives into the research arena, including “China Made 2025”; “Internet +”; “Smart Manufacturing”; Mass Innovation Entrepreneurship, etc.

At the same time, Cicalics welcomes more global topics such as: the role of MNE-R&D in China within an innovation driven economy; the gradual formation of a Global Innovation System; The effect of Chinese OFDI into R&D on developed and developing countries, etc.

Finally, having recently witnessed the Cup2016 in Paris aiming at assuring a sustainable world, it would be interesting to have papers on practices and strategies of green innovation and sustainability and associated with them new business models.