This course aims to enable students to better identify, understand, analyze, and critically assess the strategic and operational challenges facing firms that seek to take advantage of global networks to build or maintain their competitive advantages via innovations. It will allow students to better engage in managerial and decision-making processes related to innovation in the context of international business so as to prepare for careers in a global environment where firms compete on innovative products/services and processes to be embodied in business model innovations.
 

Globalization and the growing economic importance of knowledge have led firms to increasingly internationalize their generation, acquisition and diffusion of knowledge. While multinational enterprises (MNEs) traditionally retained research and development close to their home base, their innovation processes are now becoming both geographically (internationally) and functionally (value chain) more open and dispersed. In addition to the traditional demands of global efficiency and local responsiveness, successful MNEs today are acquiring and building innovatory capacities on a worldwide basis. This course focuses on the range of strategic, organizational, and geographic challenges introduced in this process. One new phenomenon is the significance of emerging MNEs from the developing economies, such as China, India, and Brazil. These new MNEs tend to rely on disruptive innovations as latecomers to global competition.
 

The MNE depends on its technological and innovatory resources to achieve its objectives. The course considers the characteristics and determinants of corporate strategies for innovation management and the consequence of geographical location for international business. The course discusses technological change as a learning process, inter-firm alliances, and the capturing of returns to international innovation. It also examines the issues related to the design of international innovation networks, divisions of labor, building of local organizations, and headquarter-subsidiary dynamics that are introduced by distributed knowledge generation and application processes. Finally, the course will touch upon national innovation systems, innovation policy and the special circumstances of innovatory activities in emerging economies.

In particular, this course will highlight the balance between exploration and exploitation as a duality from the new perspective of transaction value in addition as well as in contrast to transaction cost.
 

The course´s development of personal competences:

The course facilitates students´ further development of analytical, theoretical, presentational and teamwork skills.

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Cantwell, John and José Molero (2003), Multinational Enterprises, Innovative Strategies and Systems of Innovation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Tidd, Joe, John Bessant, and Keith Pavitt (2005), Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organisational Change, Chichester: John Wiley.

Narula, Rajneesh (2003), Globalization & technology: Interdependence, Innovation Systems, and Industrial Policy, Cambridge: Polity.

Pearce, Robert D., Julia Manea, Marina Papanastassiou, Gurkanwal Singh Pooni and Satwinder Singh (1997), Global competition and technology: essays in the creation and application of knowledge by multinationals, Basingstoke : Macmillan.

Håkanson, Lars (2005), ‘Knowledge Transfer in Multinational Corporations: An Evolving Research Agenda’, Management International Review, 45(2).

Gammeltoft, Peter (2006), ‘Internationalisation of R&D: Trends, drivers and managerial challenges’, International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, 2 (1-2): 177-199.

Havila, Virpi, Mats Forsgren, and Håkan Håkansson (2002), Critical Perspectives on Internationalisation, Oxford: Elsevier Science.

Pearce, R.D. (1999), ‘Decentralised R&D and strategic competitiveness: globalised approaches to generation and use of technology in multinational enterprises (MNEs)’, Research Policy, vol. 28, nos. 2-3, pp. 157-178.

Patel, P. and Pavitt, K.L.R. (1998), ‘The wide (and increasing) spread of technological competencies in the world's largest firms: a challenge to conventional wisdom’, in A.D. Chandler, P. Hagström and Ö. Sölvell (eds.), The Dynamic Firm: The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organization and Regions, New York: Oxford University Press.

Zander, I. (2002), ‘The formation of international innovation networks in the multinational corporation: an evolutionary perspective’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 11(2): 327-353.

Li, P.P. 2011. Disruptive innovation at the bottom of the pyramid:Toward a theory of catch-up innovation(working paper).

Li, P.P. 2010. Toward a learning-based view of internationalization: The accelerated trajectories of cross-border learning. Journal of International Management (Special issue: 50 Years of IB Research), 16: 43-59.

Li, Y., Li, P.P., Liu, Y. & Yang, D.2010. Learning Trajectory in Offshore OEM Cooperation: The Transaction Value for Local Suppliers in the Emerging Economies. Journal of Operations Management, 28: 269-282.