What Innovation Strategies MNEs Use in Emerging Markets : A Knowledge-Based View Approach

The paper explores how subsidiaries in emerging markets establish their innovation activities. The configuration of innovation activity involves: a) manufacturing (multidomestic and global); and b) knowledge transfer (inflows and outflows). In this paper, we study the largest Swedish subsidiaries in Brazil in 2012 and 2016. We identified four different types of innovation activity performed by subsidiaries: 1) technical activities; 2) product improvement activities; 3) technology development activities; and 4) technology creation activity. Exploration of these four subsidiary types enriches previous studies of innovation subsidiaries in emerging markets, and work on the relevance of global manufacturing and synchronous inward and outward knowledge flows