Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - K.I.T.F.E.M. (Knowledge and Innovation in, to and from Emerging Markets)

Teaser

Since the rise of emerging economies in global markets, it has been critical to better understand the role of knowledge and innovation played in this process. We focus not only how knowledge and innovation is managed and generated in emerging markets, but also how...

Summary

Since the rise of emerging economies in global markets, it has been critical to better understand the role of knowledge and innovation played in this process. We focus not only how knowledge and innovation is managed and generated in emerging markets, but also how traditionally they learned from advanced economies to enhance their innovation capability, and recently the reverse innovation process about how this innovation capability in emerging markets affects and is transferred to advanced economies. The findings are important for society as they draw out the contributions and implications for indiviudal managerial and non-managerial employees and raise aspects to be considered by firms when competing in Western and emerging market econocmies, thereby affecting their competiveness and the relevant segments of national economies.

Our findings are of theoretical/practical relevance:
1) We bring together and generalize results results from the fields of knowledge management, international innovation management, collaborative innovation, employment relations, and expatriate management through the exploration and exploitation of a common research framework in the context of emerging markets and their comparative studies with the EU\'s advanced economies;
2) We provide integrative frameworks of the business innovation models and trajectories followed by emerging countries´ firms and the evaluation of the potential impact of these on European firms and innovation policies;
3) Research and innovation management curriculars of the participating 50+ researchers, technicians, managers and administrative staff are improved, benefiting thereby career development, research and innovation management capability of the affiliated European and non-European institutions;
4) Existing bilateral collaborations among the project members in different sectors are strenghtended to further develop multi-lateral relationships to create high level competences and facilitate future research collaborations and transfer of innovation capabilities.

Work performed

\"To achieve the above-mentioned objectives of the KITFEM project, the activities and tasks are broken down into work packages (WP1-4), with a fifth work package running during the last 5 months (image 1). All work packages have undertaken an extensive literature review that served as a base for the following empirical enquiries.

A key contribution from the work package \"\"International Technology Transfer, Knowledge Networks and Innovation Capabilities Upgrading\"\" has been the development of a meta-translation framework of indicators to evaluate the feasibility and facilitate the undertaking comparative analyses. This has lead to a prototype of a tool to for visualising statistical analyses useful for research communication and dissemination purposes.

For the work package \"\"Collaborative innovation among stakeholders\"\", the findings lead to the identification of key marketing factors which contribute to successful partnerships (trust, commitment, organizational integration…). Additionally, potential barriers to effective collaborative innovation-oriented partnerships were determined.

The work package \"\"Employees and firm innovation\"\" has carried out empirical studies to examine the effect of involvement and participation (EIP) mechanisms on management innovation in emerging market SMEs as well as on various types of innovation in European SMEs. An important contribution derives from building up a genuine database, collecting data from CEO, middle managers and employees in Moroccan SMEs. The findings have practical implications for SME managers as they highlight the potential positive effect of EIP for innovation in emerging as well as European SMEs. However, the potential positive effect is conditioned by contextual factors, such as middle-managers value orientation, role identity, organisational climates as well as structural variables such as industry affiliation and firm size.
Also research indicates a link between innovation and firm performance, while highlighting that only specific types of innovation contribute directly to firm performance.

With respect to \"\"Expatriates as agents of knowledge transfer\"\" their research identified the types of knowledge acquired by expatriates abroad, determined the factors that facilitate reverse knowledge transfer from subsidiaries in emerging markets to headquarters, Expartriate managemnt practices can lead to strong relationships between expatriates’ integration and attachment to the organization, and reverse knowledge transfer.\"

Final results

Based on the project´s findings, the following implications can be drawn for EU policy makers:

* Create the conditions for EU companies, particularly SMEs, to exploit learning-by-trading dynamics prior to their entrance into emerging markets.
* Take into consideration China’s developmental state at work to revise and set appropriate industrial policies able to deal with State-backed behemoths.
* Recognize the distinct roles and the differential effects of institutional incentives and compliance pressures of regulations and innovation policies on firms’ innovation.
* Promote EIP mechanisms for innovation capacity building (not only social considerations!).
* Stimulate initiatives at national or lower policy levels: COST actions, cooperation with bodies focused on the promotion of innovation activities, demonstration projects run by trade unions, university-based activities…
* Monitor progress of EIP initiatives (via, for instance, the already existing survey initiatives like the Eurofound’s European Company Survey).

Implications for firms:
* Provide additional organizational support to encourage knowledge transfer both on the job and near the job.
* Provide additional training to repatriates and their coworkers in HQ to foster better awareness of the benefits of reverse knowledge transfer and of the factors that increased those benefits.
* Pay more attention to integration and attachment of expatriates before, during and after the international assignment.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.cunef.edu/web/kitfem/presentation.