The globalization of research & development in industrial corporations towards reverse innovation

Blandine Laperche () and Gilliane Lefebvre ()
Additional contact information
Blandine Laperche: LAB.RII - Laboratoire de Recherche sur l'Industrie et l'Innovation - ULCO - Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CLERSÉ - Centre Lillois d’Études et de Recherches Sociologiques et Économiques - UMR 8019 - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Gilliane Lefebvre: EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: According to J. Immelt (General Electric's CEO), considering the new forms of competition and the existing opportunities in emerging countries, industrial corporations must develop reverse innovation (Immelt et al., 2009). Reverse Innovation consists in designing products no longer in industrialized countries but in emerging countries, where they are going to be marketed first, before being marketed in industrialized countries with a certain number of adjustments. That is the reversed process of "glocalization" that consists in designing products in industrialized countries before adjusting them to emerging countries. In the present research, we would like to go further into this topic by putting it in the context of R&D globalization and by studying two cases: Ge Healthcare and Renault. These two enterprises have largely globalized their R&D activities, but have two different strategies regarding reverse innovation; Renault focusing more on an international relay engineering strategy. Some recent enquiries show that reverse innovation is still not a common strategy. But it raises some important issues regarding the nature and the durability of R&D activities in industrial countries, which we present in this paper.

Keywords: Globalization; Reverse innovation; General electric; Renault (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Journal of innovation economics, 2012, 2 (10), pp.53-79

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01385945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().