There is a kind of trend. Many companies may not be multinationals, like Magna International Inc., with 80 R&D centres in 18 countries. Many Canadian companies are of medium size. They will open production plants in other countries and then see whether they can try to establish R&D there.
In the past, developing countries had strategies based mainly on low costs. They created industrial areas and invited companies to move there, offering low taxes and cheap labour. They understood quite quickly that this was a race to the bottom and that, if they focused solely on labour costs, sooner or later another country would charge less in that area and develop in certain sectors.
As you said, some countries, such as Turkey, China and Brazil, are no longer content merely to provide low-cost labour to industrialized countries. They want university and industrial research. Consequently, they will definitely play on that and say that, from now on, if you move to their countries, you will have not only skilled labour, but also skilled labour at lower cost than in the industrialized countries, hence the importance of productivity.