Call for papers: Global Products from Innovation Labs in Developing Countries

A special issue of International Journal of Technology Management

Global innovation used to be a phenomenon uniquely confined to the industrialized world until in the early 2000s emerging economies such as China, India and Eastern Europe became attractive as hosts for foreign R&D investment. A significant number of companies from developed countries now have set up and are continuously expanding R&D operations in these emerging economic powerhouses.

While in earlier years the purpose of most of these new units were tasks mainly relating to the adapting of products to local markets, tailored development of local products or support functions for other R&D locations throughout the world, in recent years there has been an increasing trend towards locally performing full-scale product development and innovation and then taking these products to other developing markets, as well as to the original home markets in developed countries.

At the same time, companies from developing countries are significantly expanding their own R&D activities, striving to move up the innovation value-chain and "export" their innovations to the rest of the world. Fuelled by extensive efforts from national, international and municipal governments aiming to establish conditions favorable for companies and their peoples to grow sustainably, and encouraging both indigenous as well as foreign R&D activities within their borders, China and India, especially, have the potential to become noteworthy centers of research and innovation in the future.

Pioneers in the disciplines of international business and technology and innovation management have proposed theories to describe and explain global innovation and R&D patterns. Bartlett and Ghoshal's global-local typology has built the intellectual foundations for a whole generation of international innovation researchers. Vernon's international product life-cycle has been verified over and over again in the practice of multinationals seeking to develop overseas markets. Substantial research has since gone into refining and extending their work with new dimensions and contingencies given the changing context for global innovation.

From a managerial point-of-view, the challenges identified as being rooted in differences between cultures, geographic locations, and communication, are yet to be adequately solved.

This special issue aims at contributing to this thought process in the area of global innovation management for yet one more step by collecting a set of high-quality papers examining these phenomena and its related dimensions as exemplified below. Contributions both from an academic-scientific point of view as well as from a managerial perspective are welcome.

Contributions may address but are not limited to the following topics:

• Developing countries as lead markets
• The extent of "export" of innovation from developing countries
• Initiating and managing reverse innovation
• The role of national, regional and sectoral innovation systems in encouraging or hindering global innovation from developing countries
• Low-cost/high-quality R&D in developing countries
• Input factors favouring R&D from developing countries
• Studies comparing innovation activities from different BRIC countries, Eastern Europe, and other developing countries on topics such as scale and scope of activities, performance differences, R&D missions, etc.
• R&D engineers from developing markets as members of global R&D teams
• Multinational innovators from developing countries
• The role of MNCs' R&D units in developing countries within global R&D networks

Important Dates
Submission deadline for abstracts: 31 August, 2010
Submission deadline for full papers: 31 December, 2010
Notification of acceptance: 30 April, 2011
Submission deadline for final version: 31 May, 2011