Location of MNC innovation in emerging markets and developing countries: Can innovation be unbundled from production and sales functions?

Following a wave of off-shoring of manufacturing activities from the OECD countries to developing countries since the 1970s and then of business services, companies in the global North are now considering or implementing the decomposition and relocation of innovation activities to newly industrializing countries or emerging markets, not least in Asia. As innovation is taken to be an increasingly important determinant of corporate competitiveness the academic workshop will address, first, which, how and where innovation activities are off-shored (or not) from OECD countries to developing countries and especially the BRIC countries of Asia. Second, why or under which conditions are these innovation activities off-shored and are this off-shoring especially determined by their linkages to production and/or marketing/sales activities. Third, what are the corporate implications of the off-shoring of innovation activities in terms of organization, management and competitiveness? And finally, what are the innovation-related implications of technology transfer to the Global South? These issues will be debated based on empirical evidence about Danish and other OECD firms involved in global sourcing of innovation activities.
 
The workshop also aims for developing a special issue of an international journal on its theme and therefore also calls for Abstracts that might be presented and discussed at the workshop or considered for the special issue. Deadline: December 1, 2013, to Peter Wad or Michael W. Hansen. Response regarding Abstract presentation: December 5.
 
The key note speakers of the workshop are the following:

John Cantwell, distinguished professor of International Business at the Department of Management and Global Business, Rutgers University, USA. He has been researching and publishing on corporate innovation in many years and is Editor in Chief of Journal of International Business Studies.

Stine Haakonsson, associate professor, Department of Business and Politics, CBS. Her research has focused on global innovation networks and she has been publishing among other things on the global pharmaceutical and wind turbine industry.

Rasmus Lema, assistant professor, Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University. He is member of ‘Globelics’ secretariat and his research has explored organizational decomposition and globalization of innovation activities within industries like ICT software, wind turbine manufacturing etc. and the emergence of innovation systems in e.g. China and India.

Torben Pedersen, professor, Department of Management and Technology, Bocconi University, Italy. He has researched and published extensively on international business, offshoring and outsourcing and recently focused on internationalization of innovation.

Poul Houman Andersen, professor, Department of Business and Management, AAU. His research has addressed issues of international business in regard to interfaces of innovation, production and distribution, marketing, sales, and he has published in many international journals on these issues.

Place: Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14, Ks54 (TrygVestas)

Please sign up no later than December 9, 2013 at noon.