Multinational companies’ strategies for R&D internationalization: Emerging versus advanced economies

Empirical studies and theory development on firm internationalization have been mostly focused on advanced-economy multinational companies (AMNCs). In recent years, however, emerging economies’ multinational companies (EMNCs) have been on the rise with respect to their presence and investment in foreign markets. Technology- and innovation-driven investments by EMNCs are a new trend allowing them to build up their innovation capabilities and, hence, to catch-up with AMNCs. We analyze knowledge-related strategies within EMNCs versus AMNCs R&D internationalization. In line with theoretical predictions, our empirical findings based on a large multinational dataset show that EMNCs compared to AMNCs are more like to follow a knowledge exploration strategy and less likely to follow a knowledge exploitation strategy. Moreover, we show that technological leadership constitutes an important firm-level contingency, which leverages EMNCs’ knowledge exploitation. Consequently, R&D internationalization by technological leaders from emerging economies follows knowledge-related strategies mirroring those by AMNC