Business Commons^™

Innovation And Location In The Multinational Firm, John Cantwell, Yanli Zhang

Department of Management Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper provides an overview of the relationship between multinational corporations (MNCs) and local economic systems. It examines the implications of a decentralisation of innovative activity within MNCs for their interaction with local networks. It is shown that this interaction depends upon the type of cluster, whether a general centre of excellence or a specialised centre. These two principal kinds of cluster are associated with different structures of local knowledge spillovers between firms. Localised science-technology linkages offer a further category of interaction. It is shown how locational hierarchies may affect the locational strategies of MNCs when they disperse innovative activity.