Pruebas del brazo robótico

Investment in innovation assets was seemingly a central contingent variable that needed to be in place for ODIP to unfold.34_{However, our circumstantial evidence} also suggests that further investment and effort was necessary. Particularly important was active management aimed at integrating competences from across distinct customer business units. In effect, the firms managed to leverage

competences across multiple clients, in particular overseas clients.

In Brazil, the expansion of auto suppliers abroadhelped these firms to exploit ODIP at home. In other words, the increasing international presence of the suppliers observed for this research seems to have gone hand in hand with their mounting role as providers of innovative solutions. As we shall explain, there are several reasons for this.

The Brazilian case studies show that the degree of internationalisation is a variable that helps to understand the differences in the innovation capability evolution of the suppliers controlled by Brazilian nationals. The national suppliers who have

advanced most in innovation capabilities are the ones whose growth strategies include the global market: Sabó, Lupatech, Arteb and the Randon group (particularly in the case of Fras-le). By mobilising financial, human and institutional resources in order to develop the innovation capabilities required to compete globally, these firms have undergone not only a process of technological learning but also of business learning. Arguably, it is this type of increased business understanding combined with technological competence that provides a passport to ODIP.

However, internationalisation is also necessary in relation to ‘filling’ the spaces created by ODIP. In the case of Mahle Metal Leve, the customer in Germany (BMW) required that the Brazilian supplier sought collaboration with European and North American universities with which BMW have had experience in partnership in the specific field. This poses a new type of problem regarding the involvement of Brazilian research institutions in ODIPing processes driven by MNCs. To what extent do R&D networks built by MNC headquarters and involving research institutions in Europe or the US, constitute a barrier to their subsidiaries’ building

35 In the context of ODIP, there are two aims of the internationalisation process that are particularly relevant, the development of relational capabilitiesand the deepening of technical knowledgeand capabilities. Both of these are associated partly with fluid internationalisationbased on air travel and the temporary shift of base for leading projects staff. This was discussed as ‘the nature of knowledge centred interaction’ in section 7.3. However, the largest suppliers have gone beyond this with

permanent internationalisationthrough greenfield FDI (typically market-seeking front-end offices in OECD countries) and overseas acquisitions (such as Infosys’s competence-seeking acquisition of Expert Information Services in Australia).

R&D networks with local research institutions? The fact that most Brazilian subsidiaries which have extended mandates to include R&D activities are

engaged in NPD, but not in technological research, would suggest that this tends to be a limitation difficult to be overcome. R&D in such subsidiaries is usually carried out by NPD engineers with little research training. Even when they are interested in establishing links with local research, they may fail for lacking the necessary knowledge to approach scientific institutions.

Internationalisation was also important in the Indian software industry. While the methods of internationalisation have differed to some extent, the capturing of innovation spaces has been closely associated with the very concrete efforts of internationalisation, as is apparent in many of the innovation events. The

development of new capabilities has arguably also been dependent on increased global presence. The largest companies have become global corporations that can match the global presence of their customers. The importance of such linkages has driven foreign investments and the acquisitions by foreign firms. Acquisitions were often major enablers in the innovation processes behind the events examined for this research. Knowledge brought in from the outside often made a significant contribution; it would have been difficult to develop it in-house or without close linkages to technology shapers.35

More broadly, the software case suggests that cross-border linkages (as opposed to overseas investments) gave rise to competence leveraging which utilised the multi-client environment in which ODIP unfolded. Lema (2009b) distinguished explicitly between (i) the emergence of new opportunity spaces, and (ii) the processes by which suppliers ‘mobilise’ and combine resources to fill them. The material suggests that the integration of internal and external inputs for addressing new spaces was not trivial. The combinationof external and firm-internal as well as buyer/client-driven and ‘other’ inputs/resources was critical and tended to go hand in hand in the learning process. This blending process is inevitably one that occurs within firms in the supply base and one that needs to be activelymanaged. The changing demand conditions and reconfiguration of value chains did not transpire into a ‘benign escalator’ for supply-base firms.

Indian suppliers learnt to continuously cross-feed knowledge and experience from one project to another through the implementation of comprehensive knowledge management systems. These software firms became project based organisations, able to enter continuous cycles of extraction (harvesting), development and application of knowledge in projects in the same area. However, learning over time was augmented by a particular dynamism arising from the leveraging of competences acrossprojects situated in different vertical knowledge domains (for

36 This suggests that ODIP is potentially a channel for adding to existingcapabilities in subsidiaries and

suppliers in India and Brazil. This is to be contrasted with the creation ofcapabilities. We suggest that

ODIP facilitated the deepening (not the creation) of innovation capabilities. 37 There are only three exceptions, Letande, Freios Master and Suspensys.

38 We refer here to the cases of ArvinMeritor/Rockwell-Braseixos, ZF Sachs/BorgWarner and Mahle Metal Leve.

example, the automotive industry or the financial industry) and horizontal

knowledge domains (different types of IT systems such as ERP or CRM software). This combination of knowledge gave the Indian firms an advantage in supplying innovative services in the global market. They do not dilute their core capabilities by operating in multiple business lines; rather the leveraging of knowledge and experience across these business lines became a core capability in itself.

8.2 Directions of causality

In this section, we extend the timescale to show that significant capabilities existed before or simultaneously with the changing lead-firm practices.36_This raises the question of whether and how this build-up of capabilities in Brazil and India has induced ODIP on the part of lead firms in the Europe and the USA.