Strategic R&D internationalisation in developing Asian countries - the Italian experience

Abstract

Increasingly over the last two decades, companies not only produce and sell, but also develop goods and services outside their home countries. Rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception, these firms undertake significant R&D activities at different locations abroad. The phenomenon is especially visible in the developing Asian countries, whose markets are becoming extremely attractive to foreign firms while their workforce's and infrastructural R&D capacities and competencies themselves progressively favour R&D. The aim of this paper is to show R&D internationalisation activities of firms from Italy in Asian developing countries. Using a dataset of 500 Italian firms with international R&D units, as well as interviews, we researched whether companies follow a knowledge augmenting or knowledge sourcing strategy. The results show a positive relation between the choice to settle R&D units in Asia and the sale of innovative products in Asia, concluding that firms follow a knowledge exploiting strategy, establishing their whole innovation value chain to developing Asian countries.

The Impact of Ambidextrous Leadership on the Internationalization of Emerging-Market Firms: The Case of India

“…The internationalization of EMFs, especially into developed countries, has been insufficiently studied (Vrontis, Thrassou, & Mat Zin, ; Yamakawa, Peng, & Deeds, ), as opposed to compared with the reverse phenomenon (Bresciani, Thrassou, & Vrontis, ). Indeed, past works have overly focused on developed‐country firms venturing into emerging markets as opposed to EMFs venturing into developed countries (Ramamurti, ; Thrassou, ; Yamakawa et al, ).…”

The requisite match between internal resources and network ties to cope with knowledge scarcity

“…In a similar way, Doloreux and Turkina (2017) found that the use of winemaker consultants and other external marketing sources positively affects all forms of innovation through an interaction process among knowledge sources. Several authors (Bresciani et al, 2013(Bresciani et al, , 2015Bresciani et al, 2016;Casprini et al, 2016;Harel and Kaufmann, 2016;Pucci et al, 2018) investigate how change can be achieved through innovation in the context of family firms (a usual class of business in Sicily) and their conclusions also include the need for a collaborative approach toward competitiveness. Similar results, specific to agro-business, are also arrived at in Rossi et al (2014), whose research investigated the matter in the wider strategic marketing context.…”

Assessing the breadth of open innovation practices: the impact on innovation performance

“…The variable R&D intensity, used as the moderator, is calculated as the share of investments in R&D to total sales for the year, because it could affect knowledge creation and innovation within firms, and it likely impacts internal capacities for innovation (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990;Tsai, 2001;Blindenbach-Driessen and van den Ende 2014;Ahn et al, 2015;Bresciani et al, 2015).…”