Cross-Border Innovation in the Multinational Corporation

Abstract

This paper addresses an increasingly debated issue in international business literature: the emergence of cross-border innovation in the multinational corporation. It identifies duplication and diversification of advanced technological capabilities as increasingly important dimensions of the multinational network, and proceeds to investigate how growth along these dimensions has led to the formation of cross-border innovation processes in the multinational corporation. Based on a review of existing empirical studies, we suggest three research avenues to shed further light on innovation processes in the multinational corporation: (1) a more thorough investigation of patterns of knowledge exchange in the multinational network; (2) how these patterns are influenced by industry-, fim-, and technology-related variables; and (3) how cross-border innovation may constitute a significant competitive advantage of the multinational corporation.