Not surprisingly, though, when we asked those who said yes where they planned to outsource, Asia was the big winner, with 39.1 percent plumping for India, followed by China at 32.6 ­percent. Interestingly, the United States came in third, with 28.3 percent, representing 13 respondents—nine of whom are based in the Asia/Pacific region, suggesting that the flow of outsourcing is not just from West to East.

Across the board, the No. 1 reason for offshoring R&D is lower labor costs. Those working in the Prepackaged Software and Consumer Internet (such as Web applications and VoIP telephony) areas were most adamant about its importance, and just over 90 ­percent of respondents declared it their highest priority when offshoring.

But lower labor costs are not the only reason for offshoring—also rated high was “Access to additional knowledge and skills.” Tech areas in which R&D offshoring was least common were Security, Energy, Biomedical, and Aerospace, while those most prone to offshoring half or more of their R&D efforts were Consumer Computing and Displays.

Regional and national development agencies may want to take note of another survey finding: host country incentives, such as tax breaks, while important to some, weren’t a huge draw for offshoring firms in general, with 62.5 percent of respondents ranking them as “Not very important” or “Not at all important” and just 11.5 percent of respondents ranking them as “Very important.” The presence of special facilities, such as themed research parks that focus on specific areas such as Nanotechnology or Biomedical, was even less significant, with 67.5 ­percent ranking it as “Not very important” or “Not at all important” and only 5.7 ­percent as “Very important.”

Companies are also finding that offshoring is not without its drawbacks: just 9 percent of 133 respondents whose organizations currently offshore R&D reported “No problems.” The biggest headache was “Language, communication, or culture” barriers, as reported by 54.1 percent of respondents, followed by “Insufficient oversight of projects” and “Results are not high quality.”

Of course, not all outsourcing means work is sent overseas. We also looked at domestic outsourcing. Nearly 80 percent of firms did some domestic outsourcing, and the Energy, Consumer Computing, and Transportation areas were most likely to outsource half or more of their R&D in this way.

In the accompanying charts, you will find a breakdown of these results, along with some more information about who our survey members are and where they work; bear this additional information in mind when examining the breakdowns. For example, only 10 out of the 752 IEEE members we surveyed indicated that their organizations were involved in Entertainment (such as video games or consoles), as opposed to 125 who indicated an involvement in Wireless and Mobile technologies. So a breakdown in the Entertainment category will naturally have more uncertainty than one in the Wireless/Mobile category. However, we thought it best to present you with as much information as we could and allow you to use the data to meet your own needs.