Between multinational companies and sectoral innovation systems: patterns in the organization of innovation in subsidiaries

Abstract

This research investigates patterns in the organization of innovation in subsidiaries and the role of innovation projects in integrating knowledge between the multinational companies and technological partners in the host innovation system. The analysis describes and compares different configurations used in innovation projects by large subsidiaries of multinational companies and their key technological partners in the Brazilian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) manufacturing sector. Rather than best practices, the comparison of configurations in the organization of innovation projects provides a way to examine the complexity of the subsidiary development and the dynamic alignments and misalignments between the evolution of the multinational companies and sectoral innovation systems.