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The purpose of this article is to provide insights into the innovation trajectory, and knowledge pipelines of mature industry multinational enterprises (MNEs). The ability to innovate constantly amidst a turbulent and competitive environment is often the key force behind MNE survival and dominance.

This study conducts an in-depth longitudinal study of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, a global manufacturing company in the tire and rubber industry. The findings are based on USPTO patent and trademark data from 1975-2005.

The analysis reveals three crucial trends: the major role of continuous investment in innovation in the firm’s survival and turnaround; the evolution of the firm’s innovation network from a headquarters-centric model toward more geographical dispersal; and the changing mix of innovation from traditional “hard” science-based research toward a greater emphasis on “softer” competencies in design and trademarks. This third trend, in particular, opens up important new avenues for research on MNE innovation practices.

This study integrates historical analysis of a single firm in the context of its changing industry environment. The historical analysis is enriched by a detailed longitudinal quantitative analysis using a variegated dataset of patents and trademarks to investigate innovation.

This paper aims at investigating the role of institutional entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship to cope with firm’ impasses by adoption of the new technology ahead of other firms. Also, this paper elucidates the importance of own specific institutional and corporate entrepreneurship created from firm’s norm.

The utilized research frame is as follows: first, perspective of studies on institutional and corporate entrepreneurship are performed using prior literature and preliminary references; second, analytical research frame was proposed; finally, phase-based cases are conducted so as to identify research objective.

Kumho Tire was the first tire manufacturer in the world to exploit the utilization of radio-frequency identification for passenger carâ’s tire. Kumho Tire takes great satisfaction in lots of failures to develop the cutting edge technology using advanced information and communication technology cultivated by heterogeneous institution and corporate entrepreneurship.

The firm concentrated its resources into building the organization’s communication process and enhancing the quality of its human resources from the early stages of their birth so as to create distinguishable corporate entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore drivers of alliance formation in a specialized supply chain from a manager’s perspective, focussing on firm-specific resources, resources embedded in inter-firm relationships and capabilities under the control of the focal firm.

This paper focusses on the resource-based view to obtain insights from the analysis of a manager survey conducted in Canada’s beef sector, applying a logistic regression approach to study alliance formation.

In identifying significant roles for resource richness and diversification of resource usage, the analysis highlights the importance of resource characteristics underlying factor market imperfections as drivers of alliance formation in a single primary input supply chain. The results suggest that resource heterogeneity is important for alliance formation and organizational success in specialized supply chains.

If previous alliance-related experience of managers, controlled for in the underlying cross-sectional survey, serves as an approximation for persistent unobservables impacting the alliance formation decision, we may face spurious state-dependence.

Managers interested in building compatible alliances in specialized single primary input supply chains may benefit from an improved understanding of the differential role of resource characteristics and resource heterogeneity for alliance formation, as these can function as a source of competitive advantage.

The analysis provides new insights from an individual manager’s perspective on alliance formation drivers in a specialized agri-food supply chain, thereby solidifying extant findings on alliance formation obtained in other sectors. The study contributes to the understanding of the role of resources in alliance formation with regard to prior relationship experience, resource heterogeneity and thus causal ambiguity, thereby also contributing to the debate of the role of relational capabilities vs firm-internal resources for sustained competitive advantage.

This paper aims to clarify the fit of competitive strategies and firm-specific advantages (FSAs) with country-specific advantages (CSAs) in explaining manufacturing location choices at product category level in the European automotive industry.

Seven hypotheses are formulated and tested using binomial logistic regression with data from 148 passenger car models (i.e. product category level) that are sold in Europe and manufactured in countries that offer CSAs of either cost advantages or differentiation advantages. The first four hypotheses test manufacturing location choices of product categories pursuing cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, focus strategy and hybrid strategy. The other three hypotheses test whether FSAs of R&D capability, marketing capability and operations capability will impact on the manufacturing location choice. The tests control for the type of passenger cars as well as the manufacturer’s region of origin.

While pursuing cost leadership strategy leads to manufacturing in countries that offer cost advantages, pursuing differentiation strategy as well as strong R&D capability and marketing capability result in manufacturing in countries that offer differentiation advantages. Focus strategy, hybrid strategy and operations capability do not have an impact on the manufacturing location choice at product category level.

Conducting empirical research at product category level is subject to limitations in the choices of FSAs due to lack of availability of data.

Managers should assess the competitive strategies and FSAs of their product categories and then decide about manufacturing locations based on their fit with host country CSAs. Policymakers should understand the CSAs of their countries and target to attract manufacturing FDI from product categories with matching competitive strategies and FSAs.

The research contributes to discussions in explaining manufacturing location choices. Its originality lies in being the first study to test the fit of competitive strategies and FSAs of product categories with CSAs.

Research has identified inverted U-shaped relationships between domestic competitive position, often cast in terms of home-country market share or relative profitability, and speed of entry into a foreign market. However, in some industries, firms may be especially attentive and responsive to competition between firms in their local-home market (i.e. sub-national). Hence, this study aims to explore the effect of local-home market competitive intensity on the relationship between a firm’s overall competitive position and speed of entry into a foreign market.

Data from 114 large US corporate law firms from 1992 through 2008 were used for Cox proportional-hazards regression models to estimate the moderating effect of local-home market competitive intensity on the relationship between relative profitability at the national level and speed of entry (i.e. hazard rate) into China.

Less-dominant firms from highly competitive local-home markets entered China more quickly than less-dominant firms from less-competitive local-home markets. In addition, first-movers from highly competitive local-home markets tended to have more advantageous competitive profiles, as reflected in profitability, than first-movers from less-competitive local-home markets.

This research explores an important contingency in the relationship between a firm’s competitive position at home and timing of entry into a foreign market. Additionally, the results suggest that first-movers from less-competitive local-home markets may face immediate competition from better-positioned first-movers from more competitive locations within the same home market when they enter new markets.

The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of institutional distance on national innovation systems.

This study uses social network analysis to analyze the connectivity between national systems of innovation. A regulative distance index is constructed by coding the European Commission progress reports and using weights to account for relevance to research and innovation.

Reductions in institutional distance (proxied by regulative distance) increase international innovation connectivity between national systems of innovation. More importantly, it leads to increase in both the complexity and resilience of innovation connectivity between countries.

This study provides fresh evidence on the pathways through which institutions affect international business systems. Policy harmonization has strong effects on firm-level corporate strategy.

Global value changes continued to expand until the late 2000s. On the other hand, regional value chains have formed around major regional hubs due to the expansion of domestic demand in emerging economies, such as China, and strengthened trade protectionism since the global financial crisis. Such changes lead to the reorganisation of value chains, focusing on domestic markets (reshoring) or neighbouring countries (nearshoring). In particular, the importance of supply chain risk management has been highlighted following disruptions to the supply network due to the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019. In this regard, major countries such as the USA and the EU are rapidly shifting to regional value chains for stable and sustainable production, rather than primarily aiming for production efficiency targeted at reducing costs. Industries in particular are more exposed to such supply chain risks under the existing structure and it now has become extremely important for businesses to take reaction to such risks. This is especially important for major industries in a country such as automobile or semiconductor manufacturing industries in South Korea. The aim of this study, therefore, is to establish the basis for the simultaneous growth of ports and linked industries by examining the existing structure of the global value chain for the automotive industry, which has a strong presence in South Korea’s domestic economy. In this regard, this research carries out a supply chain analysis focusing on the imports and exports of automotive parts. It also analyses the current structural risks and suggests risk management measures to secure a stable supply chain.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

Cement production has advanced greatly in the last few decades. The traditional fuels used in traditional kilns include coal, oil, petroleum coke, and natural gas. Energy costs and environmental concerns have encouraged cement companies worldwide to evaluate to what extent conventional fuels can be replaced by waste materials, such as waste oils, mixtures of non-recycled plastics and paper, used tires, biomass wastes, and even wastewater sludge. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The work is based on literature review.

The clinker firing process is well suited for various alternative fuels (AF); the goal is to optimize process control and alternative fuel consumption while maintaining clinker product quality. The potential is enormous since the global cement industry produces about 3.5 billion tons that consume nearly 350 million tons of coal-equivalent fossil and AF. This study has shown that several cement plants have replaced part of the fossil fuel used by AF, such waste recovered fuels. Many years of industrial experience have shown that the use of wastes as AF by cement plants is both ecologically and economically justified.

The substitution of fossil fuels by AF in the production of cement clinker is of great importance both for cement producers and for society because it conserves fossil fuel reserves and, in the case of biogenic wastes, reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the use of AF can help to reduce the costs of cement production.

The purpose of this study is to assess the lean performance of a tyre manufacturing firm in India. The key objective is to find key strategic and operational decision‐making dimensions for developing effective lean manufacturing environment in a tyre manufacturing organization.

This research is empirical in nature where the opinions of a group of experts of an Indian tyre manufacturing firm were consulted to formulate an interpretive structural model (ISM) of the critical success factors of lean manufacturing implementation in a tyre manufacturing organization. The authors have developed an Excel‐based template for quantitative assessment of lean performance indicators on the basis of feedback from the operational staff.

This research work suggests that financial capability of an organization drives the top‐management commitment for incorporating lean manufacturing practices in a tyre manufacturing organization. Organizational culture and human resource management are the important enablers for developing change management paradigm, which in turn leads to performance improvement. This study also reveals that over‐processing as well as excessive defects are the most detrimental wastes in radial tyre manufacturing, which accounts for high manufacturing cost of radial tyre manufacturing in India.

Since this study is carried out in a single (case) organization, a relatively small sample size restricts the outcome from being considered for generic industrial application. This study none the less is useful for practicing managers and academicians for the development of lean manufacturing strategy in context with the tyre industry since it encompasses insightful views of experienced lower to upper middle level managers.

This paper provides some key enablers for the successful implementation of lean tools in Indian tyre manufacturing, where lean practices are still in the early stage and little literature is available in this context with tyre manufacturing. Also an attempt has been made to develop a simple Excel‐based template for lean assessment in the tyre industry. This template can be used in other industries by simply modifying the key attributes.