Thesis supervisor(s)
: Philippe Larédo, Aurélie Delemarle
The research presented in this document focuses on the dynamics of industrial R&D centers located abroad.
Like Ronstadt (1978), Asakawa (2001), and Asakawa & Som (2008), we find that the mission and position of R&D centers within a firm's internal innovation network are evolving. We have modeled this evolution in four distinct phases: the establishment of the center, the dual phase of building its identity through its integration into the firm's internal innovation network and the construction of its external innovation network, and finally the maturity of the center. We then sought to understand how the center moved from its establishment phase, during which it did not yet have its own identity, to its maturity phase, when it had managed to specialize and become a key element of the firm's internal innovation network. We characterized each stage of the center's evolution by the types of relationships between the center, its internal innovation network, and its local environment.
To achieve this, we drew on the literature on clusters, which focuses on the types of links necessary for the exchange of knowledge and know-how and the building of trust between several organizations beyond the mere consideration of their geographical proximity. This literature provides a tool that is rarely used in the literature on the globalization of R&D: proximities (Boschma, 2005). We used six types of proximity to understand and analyze how an R&D center located abroad evolved: geographical, organized institutional, unorganized institutional, structural, cognitive, and social proximity. Our work shows that each phase of the center's evolution is characterized by a specific architecture of proximity between the center, its internal innovation network, and its local environment. To achieve and validate these results, we combined several methodological tools: 1) we set up and ran a focus group composed of industrial R&D managers on the theme of R&D globalization for two years; 2) we studied the R&D centers located in Bangalore of four multinational companies: ABB, AkzoNobel, Procter & Gamble, and Siemens. 3/ Finally, we drew on a large number of "minicas" collected during informal interviews or meetings on the issue of R&D globalization. All of this empirical work was carried out as part of a CIFRE thesis with the European Industrial Research Management Association (EIRMA).
Thesis defended on January 16, 2012
Keywords:
R&D, Innovation, internationalization, globalization, dynamics, proximity
Doctoral school:
Organizations, Markets, Institutions