how to catch up with AI's technology

[bycomet]

AI will not sell technology to me as I am its competitor, so I have to set up my own R&D center.
However, if I have no expertise of that product class, my development speed is much lower than AI even if there are 9 units in R&D center to develop together.
Then, is there any way to catch up with AI's technology? How about to set up several R&D centers to develop together, but it seems it can not accelerate development speed?

[eleaza]

In the City Eco Sim DLC, each university in different cities can specialize and accelerate R&D of certain product class if your party is elected as the mayor of that city.

You can also hire a CTO with that particular expertise to speed it up, a 9 connect Level 9 with special CTO should give you equal footing with the AI. Also the other day I was reading an old strategy guide, and there's a tactic called multiple R&D, http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =20#p11726, don't know if this is what you are looking for. Haven't tried it myself, and don't know how effective it is in current version though.

In my own game, I usually just focus on those products I choosed and make enough profit out of them, and keep the tech lead through out the game. Leave other products for my subsidiaries to worry about, or just purchase enough of the competitors' stock to make them my subsidiaries (you can buy techs from subs no problem). If you can not buy them out, then use cheep low quality product to flood the market, and force competitors out of that product. When they drop out the market, they usually stop the R&D afterward, and willing to trade the tech out.