From local modification to global innovation: How research units in emerging economies innovate for the world
研究通过分析六家跨国公司在华研发单元，发现员工通过观察客户日常情境和从内部专家获取通用知识原则两种行为，实现从本地修改到全球创新的转变，为新兴市场创新提供新路径。
Abstract More and more companies are turning to emerging markets as sources of global innovation to help transform business and society. However, building innovation capabilities in emerging markets is still elusive for most companies. To understand how some companies are successfully building these capabilities, we examined workers within R&D units in China across six foreign multinational corporations. In contrast with prior literature that emphasizes a structural view of who the workers interacted with to innovate, our inductive analysis highlights a behavioral view of how R&D unit personnel interact during the problem and solution search process. We identified two key behaviors associated with the problem and solution search: (1) observing customers in their everyday context, and (2) uncovering general knowledge principles from internal experts. Respectively, these behaviors helped R&D workers to question assumptions about existing products as they relate to customers and to apply useful principles from expert knowledge rather than copying solution templates. Our findings offer an alternative path to building global innovation capabilities in markets where structural constraints exist for the company.