Globalizing Domestic Absorptive Capacities

Zusammenfassung

---

Promising innovation impulses originate increasingly from customers, suppliers or competitors outside of a firm's traditional home market. We investigate how firms can adjust their absorptive capacities to benefit from these new opportunities. * We suggest that these capabilities depend upon the investments in absorptive capacity development, international experience as well as the munificence of the home market environment. We test these hypotheses empirically based on a survey of more than 2,200 German firms. * We find that the globalization of absorptive capacities is a combination of refining their development (most importantly through ambitious incentive systems), export experience and shortcomings of the domestic innovation environment. The importance of each individual factor varies with regards to the source of the impulse, i.e. whether it stems from foreign customers, suppliers or competitors.

Siehe den Gesamtinhalt dieses Dokumentes

Auszug

---

Globalizing Domestic Absorptive Capacities

Introduction

Establishing "pipelines" to valuable technological expertise and market intelligence around the world has become a major theme of modern innovation management (MaImberg/Maskell 2005). Political and economic changes in large, unexplored markets combined with technological breakthroughs (internet, telecommunications) in easy, affordable communication provide exciting opportunities. Important research has been conducted into multinational firms and how they tap into international knowledge pools through subsidiaries and foreign direct investments (see for example Anand/Kogut 1997, Kuemmerle 1999, Von Zedtwitz/Gassmann/Boutellier 2004) or based on patent statistics (see for example Almeida/Phene 2004, Jaffe/Trajtenberg/Henderson 1993). We extend this line of research by focusing on the transfer of impulses across national borders that may trigger domestic innovation activities.

To do so, we draw arguments from the literature on firms' absorptive capacity, i.e. their ability to identify, assimilate and exploit knowledge from their environment (Cohen/ Levinthal 1989, 1990). More precisely, we explore the specific challenges in an international environment stemming from national and cultural borders. We ask: What factors lead firms to source innovation impulses abroad so that they can globalize their absorptive capacities? We develop these factors conceptually and derive distinctions between the specifics of different knowledge sources (foreign customers, suppliers and competitors). We test these hypotheses empirically using a survey of more than 2,200 German firms and their innovation activities.

Our analysis is structured as follows: The following section provides a theoretical background followed by the development of hypotheses. The subsequent sections provide an overview of the empirical study (data, methods, measures) and its results. We conclude with a discussion of these.

Theory Section

Several studies have outlined the rationale (competitive pressure, shorter product lifecycles, high inve...

Siehe den Gesamtinhalt dieses Dokumentes

---