Globalization of R&D: recent changes in the management of innovation in transnational corporations

Large multinational firms are the drivers for the globalization of R&D and innovation activities. There was a strong movement to establish a transnati onal configuration of R&D between 1985 and 1995. In recent years, however, R&D strategies and international location decisions have changed substantia lly. This paper is based on an in-depth analysis of R&D internationalizatio n in 21 large corporations in Europe, Japan and the US. Our findings sugges t that transnational corporations have tended to consolidate and streamline their organizations since the mid-1990s. Distributed R&D activities and gl obally-dispersed innovation processes have resulted in overly complex and u nmanageable organizational architectures. This has induced firms to search for 'leaner' and more effective types of managing their international portf olio of innovation activities. We learned that the spatial distribution of learning and R&D performing activities is something different than the spat ial distribution of coordination and control. Many companies in our sample have adapted a strategy of multiple centers of learning with one dominant c enter of coordination. A framework is developed to serve as a basis for ana lyzing different patterns of internationalization of R&D and innovation, an d for assessing the appropriate mechanisms to coordinate and control an int ernational network of technological competence centers. (C) 1999 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.