Los días 13 y 14 de marzo de 2014, la Fundación Ramón Areces organizó con el Instituto de Estudios de la Innovación (IREIN) y el Foro de Empresas Innovadoras una jornada sobre 'Nuevos enfoques sobre políticas de innovación'. Contó con la intervención de destacados expertos internacionales como Luc Soete, rector de la Universidad de Maastricht; Julia Lane, del American Institutes for Research (AIR) de Estados Unidos; Giovanni Dosi, del Institute of Economics de la Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Italia); Daniele Archibugi, del CNRS y del Birkbeck College de la University of London; John Cantwell, del Rutgers Business School de Rutgers University (Estados Unidos); Jorge Katz, de la Universidad de Chile; Tom Hockaday, del ISIS Innovation de la Universidad de Oxford (Reino Unido), y Johan Schot, del Science and Technology Policy Research de la University of Sussex (Reino Unido).

1. Explaining Patterns of
Knowledge Sourcing in MNCs
John Cantwell
Rutgers University
and Editor-in-Chief, Journal of International Business
Studies
Innovation Studies Seminar
Madrid, March 2014

2. Background
• Non-localized technological knowledge search has
gradually been rising as (i) specialized knowledge
deepening has its limits, and (ii) the technological
complexity embodied in products increases
• MNC foreign subunits have a particular role to play in
this respect, through their potential to access more
technologically distant knowledge sources in fields of
host location (vs. home location) specialization
• Combining internal with distant external knowledge
may give rise to new areas of value creation
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3. Goals of Knowledge Combination
• Core internal areas of knowledge may be
combined with more distant external knowledge
to build upon and extend the established
technological base of the firm in some new
direction
• Or, such combinations may be used to address in
a novel way a known problem or issue within the
established industry context, for which localized
solutions have proved inadequate
• MNC subunits may combine international
internal (parent) and local external knowledge
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4. Arranging Backward Citation Data
• We can examine knowledge accumulation across
boundaries in each of three dimensions:
• Geographical boundaries
o Importance of local and international knowledge
sourcing
• Technological ‘boundaries’ or the distance
between different fields of endeavor
o Implications of more ‘distant’ versus less distant
knowledge combinations
• Organizational boundaries
o Importance of intra- and inter-organizational sourcing
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5. Illustration of the Structure
Parent
Subunit: the
operation of an
MNC in one host
country location
Host Country
Home Country
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6. Some Key Contentions
• A rising technological distance of combinations and
local subunit creativity tends to lead to search being
conducted across organizational boundaries, especially
when such search is geographically localized
• But in the traditional fields of strength of their own
MNC group, creative subunits draw even more heavily
on their parent company's knowledge base
• This complementary combination of external and
internal knowledge sources is especially relevant in the
context of more open innovation systems
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7. A Foundational Theme
• Competence-creating (CC) subsidiary activities rely
upon the development of combinative capabilities
• The emergence of new fields of competencies (for the
MNC group) represent a search for new domains of
application for established lines of business, or the
fresh application of local knowledge within the MNC's
own industry or line(s) of business
• So, CC subsidiary activities do not move a subunit out
of its initial base, but rather broaden that base, and
extend its applications and its connections
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8. Trends in Knowledge Building
• The restructuring and intensification of knowledge
exchange mechanisms in MNCs are essential for
subunits to play a more creative role in knowledge
generation within their corporate groups.
• A positive association between rising international
intra-field intra-MNC knowledge sourcing and local
inter-field inter-organizational sourcing shows how the
increased complexity of knowledge combinations may
be associated with the emergence of more open
innovation systems – creative subsidiaries becoming
increasingly the initiating nodes of more open network
connectivity across boundaries.
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9. Dispersion of Knowledge Sources
• We can measure two dimensions of dispersion in the
structure of knowledge built upon by an MNC subunit –
across technological fields and geographical locations.
– Technological dispersion is the degree of spread of
knowledge that is built upon, across the different
technological fields of knowledge sourcing (cited patents
by primary field classification);
– Geographical dispersion is the breadth of different
geographical locations of origin of these knowledge
sources (cited patents by inventor location).
• Technological diversification is instead defined by the
distribution across fields of each subunit’s own
innovations (citing patents of the firm originating in the
host location).
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10. Framework for Xiaoyu Pu’s
Dissertation Research
Subunit
Tech Div.
Technological
Dispersion
Technological
Dispersion
Geographic
Dispersion
Geographic
Dispersion
Knowledge
Sourcing
Pattern of MNC
Subunit
GPTGPT
ProximityProximity
Home
Country
Sourcing
Home
Country
Sourcing
Host
Country
Sourcing
Host
Country
Sourcing
1
2
3
4
5
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11. Some Findings
• Connections 2, 4 and 5: The relationship between subunit
technological diversification and knowledge source technological
dispersion is a positive one, but the effect is negatively influenced
by the subunit’s involvement in GPT fields; and the relationship
becomes weaker when host or home country sources are excluded.
• Connections 3, 4, and 5: The relationship between subunit
technological diversification and knowledge source geographical
dispersion is a positive one, but it is negatively influenced by the
subunit’s reliance upon inter-regional sourcing. This reflects an
association of focused specialization with global knowledge search
in the critical domain, while a more diversified effort is connected
with local (geographically bounded) sources.
• Source: Paper with Xiaoyu Pu on MNC Subunit Knowledge Sourcing
– Patterns and Impacts.
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