Managing Global Innovation

Globalization has changed the face of R&D. Local knowledge clusters are not only tapped by multinationals but increasingly by small and medium-sized companies as weIl. Global R&D networks speed up the evolution of technology and ask for new management concepts. Modern communication technologies create the global village, but customers become more fastidious and request their own specific products, weIl localized, weIl tuned into their present business. Integrated technology is required to cope with these needs. The danger of over-engineering has never been as great as today. The question is frequently not whether some new features are technically feasible but whether customers are willing to accept and pay for it. The first edition of Managing Global Innovation was sold out after few months, clearly indicating the search for solutions to these challenges. This second edition has been revised for clarity and actuality. We have taken care to work in recent research findings as weIl as updating the case studies where appropriate. This book is based on the growing importance of industrial global innovation and the lack of concepts to manage it. For this book we conducted 320 interviews in 40 technology-based, highly internationalized companies, including additional interviews in 1998 and 1999 for the second edition. Dur interview partners were R&D managers and research directors from companies in Europe, USA and Japan.