Developing Innovation Transfer Capacity in a Cross-National Firm

Abstract

The study presented in this article analyzes an attempt to transfer a discontinuous product innovation across national boundaries within a biopharmaceutical company. The commercialization process, which had been effective within the company's home market, was less effective in Europe and Japan. The study concludes that when the company engaged in a transformational change intervention, it was able to improve the effectiveness of its international transfer process. The changes required were emergent rather than planned; they were driven by a renewed strategy and did not use the tools of OD nor embed itself in the humanistic values typically associated with OD. The study provides insight into the requirements of product transfer and commercialization to international subsidiaries, which needs to be approached as an international organizational change process, which the authors define as strategically aligned alterations in patterns of employee behavior across international borders.

Knowledge, skills and personality of the effective business consultant

“…Last, the business consultants must also have a “business development” mindset and approach. Business development may take different forms, such as the development of new business strategies (Bracker and Pearson, 1985; Robinson, 1982), information technology (Bloomfield and Danieli, 1995), innovation capacity (Spector et al , 2009), new products (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1995) or any other business‐related form. Thus the business consultant must possess the ability to clearly identify both the current and the desired situations, and to have the vision of how to close the gap between the two and the power to convince the client to make the necessary steps to close this gap (Fincham, 1999).…”