This paper submits that research on offshoring of R&D has focused mostly on the empirical phenomenon’s under-lying offshoring’s strategic drivers and less on extending our understanding of how the MNC reconfiguration impacts operational performance and process innovation performance. So as to theoretically frame the implications of the organizational reconfigurations and process innovation, brought about by offshoring R&D, this proposal centres on the interplay between interfaces, interdependencies and distance. Offshoring of R&D requires global reconfigurations, which in turn strain coordination due to boundary changes, and distance (in this proposal geographic and institutional distance). This increases the complexity placed on the global division and coordination of R&D activities and subsequently process innovations and calls for further investigation of organizational reconfigurations.