It is argued that the firm is the principal source of innovation and growth, a device for the establishment of technological competence, and for its continued development over time. Markets, products and background knowledge may change quite dramatically over time. Yet as a result of the...

Motives for foreign multinational investment in China are gradually shifting from being primarily either market-seeking or efficiency-seeking towards competence-seeking motives. Are such moves justified and what might Chinese patent data tell us about where such competencies are located and...

Recent work on SMEs and networks has emphasised the importance of external co-operative ties in enhancing firms’ innovative performance. These external ties provide resource constrained SMEs with access to a wider set of technological opportunities through information sharing and resource...

This paper investigates vertical knowledge transfers from inward-invested multinational enterprises to indigenous Chinese suppliers in the electrical and electronics industry in Wuxi, China. Through 16 dyadic case studies, a three-stage pathway of relationship development is established in which...

This article considers corporate technological leadership and survival in the face of changing technological opportunities over the period 1930–1990 for firms selected from three broad industrial groups. By using US patent data in a novel application of structural decomposition analysis, it...

We examine historical empirical patterns of change in corporate. technological scale and scope. Much literature on scale and scope by business and economic historians has conflated product markets and technology together. However, given the technologically complex environment of the late...

This study identifies two categories of exploration for competence-creating subsidiaries of contemporary multinational corporations (MNCs) by taking both the subsidiary's and the MNC's existing knowledge into consideration. While subsidiary exploration not new to the MNC (SE1) brings in...

This study focuses on the innovative performance implications of large MNCs' regional and global technological knowledge search strategies. In networked MNCs, the parent can still offer valuable knowledge to subsidiaries. The parent's and a subsidiary's knowledge becomes complementary if an MNC...