Until recently, Apple research and development centres never fell far from the tree. The group still does no significant research and development outside the US. Its head office in Cupertino keeps a strong hold on the core design of its products.直到最近，苹果(Apple)的研发中心未曾与总部相距太远。该集团目前仍然没最重要的研发工作放到美国之外。苹果在库比蒂诺(Cupertino)的总部仍然牢牢地掌控着其产品的核心设计。

Last week, though, chief executive Tim Cook said Apple planned to open a research centre in China, where its products are made, rather than researched or developed. He has strong commercial reasons to plant more Apple flags. 然而，苹果首席执行官蒂姆库克(Tim Cook)上周回应，苹果计划在中国成立一个研究中心。苹果的产品在中国生产，但却不是在中国研究或者研发出来的。从商业角度而言，库克有充份理由在更好地方挂上苹果的旗帜。

Apple sales in China have been dented by local rivals such as Huawei. Mr Cook’s announcement came while he met vice premier Zhang Gaoli — a reminder that RD centres punch above their weight politically.苹果在华销售遭华为(Huawei)等中国本土竞争对手的蚕食。库克是在和中国副总理张高丽会面时宣告此事的——这警告人们，从政治角度而言，研发中心具备惊人其本身的重要性。

Foreign investors do not have to commit much money or employ many scientists to build an RD hub, but the suggestion that they detect some magical innovation-fertiliser in the local water is like catnip to politicians. 外国投资者不用投放过于多钱或雇用过于多科学家就能创建一个研发中心，但是，外国投资者在当地水土中找到了某种神秘“创意肥料”的迹象，对政治人士而言就像猫薄荷之于猫一样有极大的吸引力。In return for handing over the keys to land, granting planning permission and even ladling on subsidies, the mayor or minister briefly gets to look as clever as the people the new RD hub will hire.市长或者部长接管土地使用权、颁发规划许可、甚至是大量获取补贴，作为报酬，他们在短时间里需要变得像新的研发中心即将雇用的那些人一样聪慧。

The question in Apple’s case is what took it so long?就苹果而言，令人不解的问题是它为何花上了这么长时间才作出这一要求呢？Multinationals’ habit of setting up research centres abroad is more than 50 years old, and international companies’ interest in setting down research roots in developing countries dates at least to the early 2000s.跨国公司在海外成立研究中心的惯用作法可以追溯到50多年前，而跨国企业在发展中国家成立研究分支的兴趣最少可以追溯到2000年代初。When IBM wanted to establish a non-US RD centre in the 1950s, it sent an engineer called Arthur Samuel to scout sites in Europe. 上世纪50年代，IBM想在美国以外创建一个研发中心，于是派遣一个名为阿瑟塞缪尔(Arthur Samuel)的工程师在欧洲找寻适合的地点。Samuel described the London suburbs he visited as “the most dismal places that I have ever seen”. He was drawn instead to Zurich by its “proximity to talent”. 塞缪尔把他造访的伦敦郊区称作“我见过的最差劲的地方”。忽略，“相似人才”的苏黎世更有了他。

This remains among the most popular reasons for companies’ choice of foreign RD locations, according to fDi Markets, the Financial Times’ cross-border investment research service. 英国《金融时报》旗下跨境投资研究服务机构fDi Markets的研究指出，这一点仍然是企业将某个地点选为海外研发中心地址的原因中最广泛的一个。IBM’s Swiss facility fostered four Nobel laureates but RD strategy has since evolved to put fast-growing markets and customers closer to the centre.IBM的瑞士研发中心培育了4名诺贝尔奖获得者，但此后研发中心的选址策略改变为让研发中心更加附近较慢发展的市场和客户。

Jaideep Prabhu of Cambridge’s Judge Business School says Apple might have held back from China so far because of worries about intellectual property leaking into a market notorious for knock-offs of its flagship products. 英国剑桥大学(Cambridge)嘉治商学院(Judge Business School)的贾伊迪弗普拉布(Jaideep Prabhu)回应，苹果仍然到现在才要求在中国成立研发中心的原因，有可能是苹果忧虑其知识产权不会泄漏——中国是一个因为“山寨”苹果旗舰产品而声名狼藉的市场。But when he studied the research centre phenomenon in the mid-2000s, he found many large companies were already challenging the idea that RD was “too important to be offshored”. 但当他研究了2000年代中期的研发中心现象后，他找到很多大公司早已在挑战这一观念，即研发“过于最重要，以至于无法设于海外”。

The quality of skilled local researchers was the main attraction of Bangalore or Shanghai. The fact they could be hired for much less than in New York or Silicon Valley added to the allure.当地高水平的娴熟研究人员是班加罗尔或者上海的主要吸引力。再者，企业需要以比在纽约或者硅谷较低得多的成本雇用这些人员也强化了这些地方的吸引力。

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