Multinationals and National Systems of Innovation: Strategy and Policy Issues

Abstract

One of the most significant journeys in our understanding of international business has been that from an essentially centralized view of innovation in MNEs toward one that encompasses an increasing range of decentralized inputs and strategic postures. This change in perspective can then be seen as decisively embodied within comparable changes in the way in which the effects of international business on individual host countries have been analysed. Here we can see a refocusing from an FDI-based interpretation of flows of separate firm attributes (increasingly technology and other intangible assets rather than finance capital per se) toward a more MNE-strategy oriented evaluation of how firms position their operations in a specific location within wider globalized programs (Pearce, 2001, forthcoming). The aim of this chapter then is to generate a methodology for the assessment of the ways in which MNEs’ globalized strategies for innovation involve themselves with the attempts of national economies to generate and operationalize innovation competences as a source of growth and international competitiveness. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.