Abstract

The dynamic global competitive environment and efforts by firms to expand and organize and reorganize their innovative capabilities have led to a reassessment of a number of results from the economic literature on multinationals and on national innovation systems. Evolutionary and resource-based perspectives both emphasize the sticky character of innovative capabilities. The latter evolve along specific trajectories, which depend both on geography and history as firms' capabilities are embedded in national systems of innovation. Yet, in the context of globalization and as firm strive to access external technological resources through a complex web of transfer and learning, they tend to speed up and modify trajectories. Relatedly, innovative activities become somewhat less dependent on the innovation system of their home country as internationalization of R&D provides access to foreign systems.