ATLANTA-First it was cheap labor. Now it's research and development. However, contrary to popular belief, low cost alone isn't the reason more and more companies are outsourcing their R&D operations to countries like China and India.

Instead, according to a recent study sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (Kansas City, MO), U.S. and Western European companies are sending their R&D work offshore for a number of different reasons. These include market growth potential, quality of R&D talent, university collaboration and intellectual property (IP) protection.