Cross-Border Innovation in the Multinational Corporation

EXTERNAL KNOWLEDGE SOURCING AND MNES’ SUBSIDIARIES SERVICE INNOVATION PERFORMANCE: THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION AND EXPLORATORY LEARNING

This study assessed the influence of external knowledge sourcing on multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) subsidiaries service innovation performance. It also considered the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation, as well as the mediating role of exploratory learning. Empirical analysis was based on primary data gathered from 156 MNEs’ subsidiaries. Various validity and reliability checks were conducted before the presentation of the actual analysis, which was conducted using ordinary least squares approach, run using SPSS (v. 20). Findings indicate that exploratory learning fully mediates the relationship between external knowledge sourcing and MNEs’ subsidiaries service innovation performance. Entrepreneurial orientation was also found to moderate the relationship between external knowledge sourcing and exploratory learning. This study adds to the existing debate in the arena of resource-based theory.

GLOBAL DREAMS — LOCAL TEAMS: RHETORIC AND REALITIES OF TRANSNATIONAL INNOVATION

This article challenges notions of transnational innovation and global project teams as imperatives for modern management of innovation. Proceeding from an account of the localised dynamics of a radical technology innovation project in the early 1970s, the article reviews the strategy theorists of the 1990s, who proclaimed the virtues of cross-border innovation processes. Their expectations of international synergies and world-wide learning are confronted with the realities and local harvesting in a transatlantic innovation project at a European multinational. An account follows of a radical innovation project at the firm, which was the scene of the introductory study. Now, 25 years later this industrial technology company had become part of a far-flung multinational, which according to popular management theorists was the model of international innovation. The case account highlights the surprising similarities between the two projects, and the sustained importance of intensive local interaction and commitment in uncertain innovation projects.