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For the specific topic of multinationals in clusters, both regional strands and international business and management literatures address the topic from different yet intertwined perspectives. This study aims to facilitate the integration of the conversations and the distinct literatures to produce a clear understanding and conceptualization of the existent knowledge on the topic, with the aim to foster an integration of those different lines of inquiry on the topic that can advance scholarly research and improve policymaking.

Mixing a robust and longitudinal bibliometric analysis (1992-2018) and a qualitative critical review, the study disentangles sub-conversations on the topic in each literature.

The study encounters commonalities that foster cross-fertilization and blind spots that prevent integration of findings from each literature.

Both literatures need to cross-fertilize and integrate each other’s knowledge.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to integrate literatures using bibliometrics, mapping the existing knowledge on two key areas of competitiveness: clusters and multinationals.

We address the following research questions: (1) Is the innovation trajectory of the acquirer affected by previous acquisitions? (2) In which direction knowledge recombination from the acquisition is pushed further? (3) Is the technological acquisition more a means for knowledge exploration and radical innovation or, on the contrary, a way for consolidating previous technological specialization?

The nature of this study is exploratory; therefore, we opted for an inductive approach based on the L'Oréal case study analysis. Data were triangulated from different sources: (a) the L'Oréal website and press releases collected in the 2009–2015 period; (b) journal articles and books on the global cosmetics industry and the insightful work of Jones (2010); (c) the Questel Orbit database containing data on patents; and (d) the Zephyr – Bureau van Dijk database containing information on the acquisitions of firms.

Empirical evidence from a patent data analysis reveals a paradoxical path. On the one hand, acquisitions enable the company to explore new technological spaces; on the other hand, they allow it to reinforce a preexisting technological trajectory, even when the knowledge base of the target is distant from that of the acquirer. Thus, in our case study, the absorption and recombination of knowledge from a variety of domains support specialization more than diversification technology strategies.

We add to innovation management literature a new perspective, by offering a detailed analysis, through patent data, of the knowledge recombination process, led by technological acquisitions.

Relying on mergers and acquisition transaction-level data set and adopting a more region-specific approach with a focus on industry-region pairs, this paper aims to examine how cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) have an effect, in terms of technological spillover and collaboration, on European regional clusters.

Adopting an industry-region pair approach, this study is based on a quantitative analysis of regional clusters belonging to 262 European regions and 25 patenting industries. Different thresholds of industrial specialization are used to identify clustering industries within a region. Invention performance at the regional cluster level is defined through two sets of different measurements to assess the impact of CBAs on invention quantity performance and internal and external technological collaboration.

The results reveal that CBAs have a positive and significant impact on the number of patents as well as the number of internal and external technological collaborations and that this effect is persistent over time. Furthermore, through exploring the interindustry technological spillover effect of CBAs registered in the same region of a cluster but outside the cluster itself, the authors found that CBAs in a regional cluster are inclined to produce technological spillovers within the cluster but no significant effects in the other industries of the region.

This paper is an attempt to empirically explore CBAs and technological spillover in European regional clusters. Therefore, it contributes to the debate, thanks to the use of an industry-region pair approach.

The fragmentation of the production process is a major theme of research in international business. Trade benefits arise from the “slicing up” of the aggregate value chain, as well as the entry of new countries bearing low labor costs. If, initially, multinational corporations (MNCs) relocated only standardized, low-value manufacturing activities in new emerging economies (exploitative offshoring), now they are also offshoring their knowledge-intensive activities (explorative offshoring). In the past, the literature on internationalization was mainly focused on the characterization of the MNC as a specific monolithic organization active in the international production. In the present, numerous analyses have discussed the international location of R&D activities, mainly in advanced countries. The foreign R&D subsidiaries are still tightly linked to the headquarters, maintaining a controlled position. Future research must address two orders of issues. The first is the progressive autonomy of the foreign subsidiaries, which are more and more developing new and independent lines of research. This process leads MNCs to mobilize and leverage untapped pools of knowledge scattered around the world. The second is the R&D offshoring toward emerging economies. This complex process can be characterized as a move from the smile model discussed extensively by Ram Mudambi (where emerging economies were considered as pools of low-cost labor tout court) to a new model, called here the λ (lambda) model (where emerging economies are also pools of skilled labor). This paper will explore these new trends using some illustrative cases: L'Oréal (FR), Pfizer (US), ST Microelectronics (CH), and Geox (I). The cases reveal the double orientation of MNCs toward emerging economies, where both explorative and exploitative offshoring takes place.

The aim of the chapter is to identify the internationalization models of SME industrial district firms within a very integrated and dynamic Regional Innovation System (RIS) of Italy. By doing so, we investigate which are the strategies of firms embedded in a RIS to access global suppliers and markets. Accordingly, this chapter explores the role of SMEs firms' dynamic capabilities, its linkage with the industry investments in ICT (information and communication technologies) and the impact of the utilization of regional knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in shaping the degree of internationalization of local firms.

The analysis is based on a survey addressed during 2004 to entrepreneurs or managers of a sample of 125 SMEs firms operating in 7 industrial districts (biomedical, ceramics, shipbuilding, footwear, textile, plastics and packaging) of the Emilia Romagna.

The results coming from a structural equation model revealed factors that impact on firms' degree of internationalization in the input (relocalization of foreign purchases through global value chains) and in the output dimension (export sales). Some interesting insights on what lies beneath the internationalization of firms in a very dynamic regional innovation system like that one of Emilia Romagna are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the combined effect of Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A) partners’ technological relatedness and the acquirer’s effective utilization of the target’s knowledge on explorative and exploitative invention performance post-M & A.

Based on the knowledge perspective of an M & A, this study measures how much of the target’s knowledge acquired in an M & A has been effectively transformed into new knowledge. A negative binomial regression on a cross-sectional data set of 152 bio-pharmaceutical firms (59 European firms and 93 North American firms) completing at least one M & A in the period between 2001 and 2005 is conducted. The effect of knowledge utilization is assessed by comparing performance six years before the M & A and six years after.

The effective assimilation and utilization of acquired knowledge positively affects both acquirers’ explorative and exploitative performance post-M & As. The combined effect with technological relatedness, measured as similarity and complementarity, further enhances the acquirer’s technological performance. However, while the utilization of similar knowledge significantly affects only exploitative invention performance, the utilization of complementary knowledge influences both, although explorative more than exploitative performance.

The acquirer’s ability to effectively use the target’s knowledge is crucial in order to support the transformation of the inventive potential, such as is embodied in the interaction between an internal and an external base of knowledge, into new explorative and exploitative performance.