Global Companies Local Innovations

Investigating the innovation activities of multinational corporations, this book uncovers and examines why the geography of innovation by multinationals is overwhelmingly local, in spite of their global operations in manufacturing and sales through case studies of produce development by three global players: Toyota, Sony, and Canon. The microdynamic approach of the book allows an in-depth investigation of the engineering and technical aspects of innovation making. The book unfolds the complex and constant process of trial and error in innovation and reveals three fundamental natures of innovation making: complexity, interdisciplinarity, and prototyping and testing. In order to manage these three natures of innovation, firms have to plan, ironically, for unplanned situations and to collocate knowledge, people, and resources.

Investigating the innovation activities of multinational corporations, this book uncovers and examines why the geography of innovation by multinationals is overwhelmingly local, in spite of their global operations in manufacturing and sales through case studies of produce development by three global players: Toyota, Sony, and Canon. The microdynamic approach of the book allows an in-depth investigation of the engineering and technical aspects of innovation making. The book unfolds the complex and constant process of trial and error in innovation and reveals three fundamental natures of innovation making: complexity, interdisciplinarity, and prototyping and testing. In order to manage these three natures of innovation, firms have to plan, ironically, for unplanned situations and to collocate knowledge, people, and resources.

'This wonderful volume brings together contributions mainly from the innovation literature, whose findings are in a sense quite familiar, but which in this collection are juxtaposed in such a way as to highlight their common institutional underpinnings. This is very much due to the efforts of the editor, whose insightful introduction and editorial vision brings out several interesting and emerging themes from this collection of papers. I think this volume breaks new ground in highlighting the embeddedness of MNE subsidiaries in multiple contexts, and it will be of considerable interest to scholars engaged with institutional analysis. However, I also believe that researchers interested in regional embeddedness, the geography of innovation, and knowledge management will find new angles to their work in this collected volume.' – Sarianna M. Lundan, University of Bremen, Germany Multinational companies are crucial actors in a global knowledge-based economy, combining the advantages of global and locally coordinated production and innovation strategies with specific regional and national factors. This book questions how MNCs can best exploit institutionally embedded knowledge, explores the utilization of external institutionally embedded knowledge in corporate innovation processes, and addresses the challenges of embeddedness. The expert contributors draw on managerial, economic, geographic and sociological perspectives to explore the essential roles of regional and national knowledge infrastructures and the cultural and political environment of MNCs. They build upon, update, and extend the discussion on the regional and national embeddedness of MNCs with new country case studies and comparative analyses, focussing on the relationship between innovation in companies and regional studies. Significantly, the book also establishes a link between two important debates that have hitherto been largely disconnected: Regional studies and international business studies separately address issues that fall within the scope of the book, but do not provide an integrated analysis of the embeddedness of MNCs. This pathbreaking book goes some way to fill this gap in the literature and as such, will prove invaluable to academics, R&D managers, regional policy makers and students with an interest in international business, business economics, regional studies and organization studies.

The key to bridging your global innovation gap In today's global economy, it would be short-sighted to rely solely on local resources for new-product innovations. Instead, knowledge and activity critical to innovation most likely lie outside your company's home territories--sometimes far outside. And this distance makes it harder than ever to obtain and integrate these resources, eating away at your competitive edge. How to tackle this challenge? In Managing Global Innovation, INSEAD's Yves L. Doz and Keeley Wilson show you how to build and leverage a global innovation network. Drawing on extensive research and real-life company examples, they walk you through a set of practical frameworks for acquiring and integrating innovation-critical knowledge from multiple sources. You'll learn to optimize your innovation footprint, improve communication and receptivity, and enhance collaboration in order to succeed on a global scale. Based on in-depth research within more than three dozen corporations--including Citibank, Essilor, GE, GlaxoSmithKline, HP Labs, HP Singapore, Nokia, Novartis, Shiseido, Siemens, Snecma, Synopsys, and Xerox--this book bridges theory and practice. Managing Global Innovation gives you the tools to harness critical expertise from around the globe--and channel it into your innovation programs.

Globalization has moved through several change phases from capitalistic philosophy to democratic business notions involving stakeholders in the process of business growth. Large companies are seeking to harness globalization through cooperation with the local enterprises to reach the bottom-of-the-pyramid market segment. The opportunities for global businesses are expanding with the support of rapidly emerging product markets, the global race for innovation, technology, and talent management, which tend to widen the impact of digitization. The multinational companies today are engaging with the local enterprises to exploit reverse innovations and build new business models. This edited volume spread across fourteen distinguished articles aims at bringing together rich discussions on global-local convergence in reference to emerging markets. The impact on business-to-business and business-to-consumers imperatives, global-local convergence, and vice-versa effects that are driving the national economy are discussed through conceptual and empirical research papers. Discussions in this volume would critically analyse the convergence of technology, business practices, public policies, political ideologies, and consumer values for improving business performance at the global-local paradigm. This book will serve as a reference book and is widely useful to researchers engaged in exploring the small-business development in emerging markets and the effects of expansion of multinational companies into the emerging markets. The research papers and essays compiled in this volume will be enriching knowledge on business management among policy makers, corporate managers, and students of graduate management programs. In our view, graduate management students, potential researchers, and corporate managers will find this volume interesting for carrying out future research.

A small number of countries, regions, cities, and localities are powerful gatekeepers and generate the bulk of creative and innovative ideas, while the majority is largely excluded. This book looks at neglected, but emerging innovation centres analysed from various spatial and organizational perspectives; ranging from entire countries and regions to individual firms and small neighbourhoods. Bringing together leading scholars from various disciplines, it examines a variety of economic sectors including biotechnology, agrotourism, and the food retail industry. The authors employ various, often contradictory, concepts, ranging from local buzz and the global pipeline, through an analysis of collective learning processes to geographical embeddedness, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The purpose of the book is twofold: investigating changes occurring in the regions and cities under transformation and attempting to find common and unique mechanisms behind these changes. Consequently, the authors shed light on the scale and scope of the innovativeness of selected economic and social processes.

The Global Innovation Index ranks the innovation performance of 142 countries and economies around the world, based on 84 indicators. This edition explores the impact of innovation-oriented policies on economic growth and development. High-income and developing countries alike are seeking innovation-driven growth through different strategies. Some countries are successfully improving their innovation capacity, while others still struggle.

How multinational companies can use digital technology to compete in a world where business is driven by the forces of both globalization and deglobalization. Digital technology has put globalization on steroids; multinational companies now account for one-third of world GDP and one-fourth of world employment. And yet complicating this story of unchecked global capitalism are two contradictory forces. Even as advances in digital technology enable borderless markets, a new nationalism has emerged, reviving protectionism and railing against digital colonialism. In The Digital Multinational, management experts Satish Nambisan and Yadong Luo examine how companies can adopt a dual strategy to cope with this new normal: harnessing the power of digital technology while adapting to the geopolitical realities of particular markets. Key to success, Nambisan and Luo explain, is the notion of tight and loose coupling to characterize the relationship of the digital multinational to its global partners and subsidiaries. Identifying the tightness-looseness requirements of global business connectivity leads to successful business strategy. Drawing on real-world examples that include Burberry’s entrance into the Chinese market, Unilever’s AI-powered global talent marketplace, and the Vocal for Local movement in India, they develop a typology of global business contexts; discuss digital strategies for entering new markets, establishing digital platforms, managing globally dispersed activities, and pursuing innovation; and explain how these strategies can be part of a business leader’s toolkit. The Digital Multinational is an essential guide to competing in a business world driven by both globalization and deglobalization.