Max von Zedtwitz

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Copenhagen Business School

Disruption and uncertainty are distinct but related concepts with fundamental impact on firms' R&D. Management of R&D under disruption and uncertainty has become a critical issue in innovation management. With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, firms are increasingly facing disruptions along multiple dimensions: technological, market,...

Despite a growing literature on open innovation in new product development (NPD), little is known about when openness is most beneficial during the innovation process. This study investigates the effectiveness of opening up NPD projects early or late, or before or after product launch, leading to four intertemporal NPD strategies: closed-closed, cl...

Extending thirty years of NPD best practice studies, this article presents the results of the most recent 2021 global best practice survey on product development management practices conducted by the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA). With responses from 651 companies in 37 countries, the results reveal once again that no single c...

Technological learning within national innovation systems (NIS) stands at the core of technological upgrading at the firm and economy level. The common understanding is that NIS are the primary source of technological knowledge acquisition for innovating firms, but the opening of economies, the globalization of innovation networks, and the rapid in...

The papers in this special issue were submitted to all the conferences organized by IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS) in a given calendar year. In 2017, IEEE TEMS initiated its flagship conference TEMSCON (held in Silicon Valley), which serves as rebranding from its original International Technology Management Conferences (I...

The Oxford Handbook of China Innovation provides a contemporary and authoritative view of the role of innovation in China’s extraordinary emergence. The Handbook consists of chapters written by over sixty experts from universities and research institutions worldwide, who describe and analyze this phenomenon with criticism, discussion of policy issu...

In recent years, emerging markets have come to represent the largest share of global GDP and have made gains in economic development and political influence. In turn, emerging market companies have taken on a new level of importance in driving innovation, local development and global competition. Advancing an integrative view that captures the dive...

Multinational companies exist in part because of their ability to tap into worldwide centers of expertise and disseminate this knowhow within the global firms. However, sharing knowledge efficiently is difficult even in highly networked organizations. Knowledge flows are hindered by spatial distance, costs of set-up and maintenance of communication...

This paper explores how foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) manage risks associated with “forced” technology transfer (“FTT”) policies in emerging markets. Although MNCs are increasingly exposed to appropriability risks from these policies, how they respond is relatively understudied in international business (IB) research. We explore this to...

Populism is no longer a business risk confined to emerging markets. In fact, measured by the share of votes for anti-establishment parties, populism in developed economies is at its highest levels since the 1930s. Given the multiplicity of factors driving this “neo-populism” and the type of institutions shaping its evolution, multinational corporat...

Populism in developed economies, measured by the share of votes for anti-establishment parties, is at its highest levels since the 1930s. This “neo-populism” is directly or indirectly costing MNCs profit margins, customer loyalty, strategic footholds, and talented employees. However, little practical advice is available regarding how to navigate th...

For much of the last two decades, foreign innovation in China has been driven by competition among foreign firms and by imitative threats from local Chinese firms. However, over the last five years, many domestic Chinese firms are innovating unlike ever before. The ramifications of this transformation can be profound for foreign MNCs. Drawing upon...

This paper evaluates the ability of “forced technology transfer” (FTT) policies – i.e., policies meant to increase foreign-domestic technology transfer that simultaneously weaken appropriability of foreign innovations – to contribute to technology transfer. We focus on transfer of frontier technology in China's newly designated “strategic emerging...

The formerly fully integrated pharma value chain is disaggregating given the emergence of highly capable and specialized research and clinical development service providers. The options range from outsourcing, out-licensing, and in-licensing, strategic partnerships and co-development. These concepts are discussed in detail and illustrated with case...

More than in most other industries, the success of pharma R&D hinges on efficient and intelligent pipeline management. All activities and tasks in the research and development phases are highly regulated and defined with precision—a prime example of a stage-gate process. Given the long duration of the development of a new drug, and the increasing R...

This final chapter summarizes the key conclusions from the book, identifies key trends and suggests future directions in leading pharmaceutical innovation on three levels: (1) Increasing R&D efficiency and effectiveness; (2) redefining and rethinking the business model, and (3) leading people for innovation and change. Each of these levels is discu...

Pharma innovation is becoming increasingly global, partly due to the lure of serving new markets, partly because of the need to access early new technology and talent wherever it emerges. Apart from the established centers of innovation in the United States, Europe and Japan, India, China and Singapore are rising attractors for global life science...

The traditional model of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry is being challenged by an explosion of costs for R&D, a strengthened voice of the customer and regulatory bodies in the development of new medicines, and the vanishing of easy targets. An overview is given of established and emerging pharma companies, the cost structures for pharma...

Already a high-tech industry by virtue of its science underpinnings, pharma innovation is undergoing a major shift in the wake of the adoption of several new discovery and development technologies. The rise of the biotech industry is the most obvious one, but new approaches in target discovery, high-throughput screening, combinatorial chemistry, hi...

Although the pharma industry is primarily based on a science-driven paradigm, the industry itself is highly complex with multiple stakeholders and actors. We employ Porter’s Five-Forces industry analysis to examine the power of suppliers and buyers, potential competitors, the threat of substitute products, and rivalry among established companies. R...

This book investigates and highlights the most critical challenges the pharmaceutical industry faces in an increasingly competitive environment of inflationary R&D investments and tightening cost control pressures. The authors present three sources of pharmaceutical innovation: new management methods in the drug development pipeline; new technologi...

China has become one of the most desired locations in which to do R&D. However, it has little innovation of its own, and intellectual property protection is weak. This raises questions: Is China R&D more hype than reality? Do cost advantages really outweigh the risk of losing technology to Chinese competitors? Lessons learned from managing R&D in C...

New Product Development (NPD) processes commonly involve distributed teams. The more dispersed team members are, the less frequently and easily they will communicate, and the more challenging it will be to form a cohesive team. One solution is to reduce task interdependence and adopt a mechanistic coordination mechanism, which reduces the need for...

This chapter develops the conceptual model that maps how the product safety context and product innovation affect product safety performance. The conceptual model is based on the MBNQA framework, the EFQM excellence framework, the innovation diamond, and conceptualizations of culture. We arrive at 12 hypotheses relating how internal context—such as...

This chapter presents input for more responsible management of product innovation activities to various stakeholders of product safety, especially regulators/policy makers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. The immediate benefits are a better understanding of how to develop products that are safe—with obvious benefits for manufacturing firms...

This chapter presents the results of in-depth interviews with 40 senior managers from 33 firms, the observations in some firms interviewed, and a thorough review of secondary information. The results are summarized in four key themes: product safety strategy, product safety culture, concurrent engineering, and new product development processes. Bes...

This chapter covers the research design, the selection of the sample, the survey instrument development, data collection and analysis for hypotheses testing, and in-depth interviews in our research on product safety as the result of various internal factors of product development in manufacturing companies. Because this study is both exploratory an...

This chapter presents the results of our data analysis procedures on the 12 hypotheses about responsible product innovation as described in Chap. 4 on methodology. Specifically, measurement model and structural model assessment was carried out to test hypotheses 1 through 8, MANOVA was performed to evaluate hypotheses 9 and 10, and multigroup analy...

Product safety is defined as whether the use of a product, under normal or reasonably foreseeable condition of use, including duration, involves any risk of injury or damage to health of users or damage to property or environment. Insufficient product safety has grave implications for individuals, companies, and occasionally society as we know it....

Based on the hypothesis testing and triangulation analysis of the quantitative and qualitative findings of our research on product safety and new product development, this chapter summarizes the conclusions, the academic contributions, and limitations of the research and proposes future research directions in responsible product innovation.

Knowledge exchange generally leads to mutual benefits, but unintentional knowledge transfer may have negative consequences for the original knowledge owner. Knowledge loss may be caused by, e.g., key employees leaving, and if key knowledge assets are obtained by competitors, it may harm the competitiveness of the firm. As the dynamics of overall kn...

This book investigates and highlights the most critical challenges the pharmaceutical industry faces in an increasingly competitive environment of inflationary R&D investments and tightening cost control pressures. The authors present three sources of pharmaceutical innovation: new management methods in the drug development pipeline; new technologi...

This study focuses on how innovation in general and product innovation in particular are influenced by firms' agglomeration in smaller local districts, the so-called microgeography of product innovation. Using spatial analytic methods on the mobile gaming industry in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, this study finds that mobile gaming firms co-locate t...

The economic benefits of reverse innovation are intuitively compelling, but this new innovation strategy presents several challenges to established firms, ranging from fears of product cannibalization to not-invented-here syndrome. French ophthalmic lens maker Essilor has experimented with reverse innovation over several projects; an examination of...

Background Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are developing novel approaches to healthcare that may be relevant to high-income countries (HICs). These include products, services, organizational processes, or policies that improve access, cost, or efficiency of healthcare. However, given the challenge of replication, it is difficult to identi...

Small multinational corporations (sMNCs) and their quest for internationalization of R&D have attracted little research attention. Our study focuses on sMNCs from Germany within the elec-trical, machinery and automotive industry investing in R&D in China. Based on an empirical study of 36 interviews in 19 sMNCs with R&D in China, we analyze motivat...

Recognising the growing role that emerging economies play in the global innovation landscape, the article provides a measure for the extent of the phenomenon identifying Asia as the main source of a new threat – and opportunity – for Western companies: reverse innovation.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is one of the most powerful methodologies in new product development (NPD) because of its systematic support of knowledge creation and sharing. However, greater product complexity, increasing dynamic customer requirements and further decentralization of innovation teams undermine applicability of QFD in modern NPD....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how international R & D alliances are formed during industry transition from the point of view of the local Chinese partner. Design/methodology/approach – Review of industry data provided by Chinese Statistical Office coupled with four in-depth case studies. Findings – The nature of the techno...

East Asia, despite its pre-modern cultural ties and connections, is one of the least integrated geographic regions in terms of its cross-border S&T networks (OECD, 2014). Debates over whether MNCs pursue (or should pursue) global or regional strategies often include the footnote that East Asia is a less integrated region than either North America o...

This paper empirically extends the research on the relationships between organizational culture, new product development practices and product safety performance. Using Schein’s conceptualization of culture, i.e., underlying assumptions, espoused values and artefacts, we build and test a model among five variables: top management commitment to safe...

The relationship between team identification and expertise identification in the R&D context and the mechanism by which these variables influence R&D creativity is not yet clear. We present and empirically test a theoretical framework proposing that knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between identification and creativity in R&D teams. Base...

Reverse innovation commonly refers to an innovation initially launched in a developing country and later introduced to an advanced country. Adopting a linear innovation model with the four sequential phases of concept ideation, product development, primary target market introduction, and subsequent secondary market introduction, this study expands...

Foreign firms patent in emerging economies with weak appropriability regimes at an increasing rate. This phenomenon constitutes a paradox since in such a setting foreign firms should have weak incentives to patent. In an attempt to resolve this paradox, we conducted an inductive analysis of 11 foreign firms that patent in such a setting, using the...

Empirical research has produced little evidence on the implications between NPD practices and product safety. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the leading firms manage product safety in product development in juvenile products industry. To this end, we conducted 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews in 24 leading global firms in the juv...

Foreign firms patent in emerging economies with weak appropriability regimes at an increasing rate. This phenomenon constitutes a paradox since in such a setting foreign firms should have weak incentives to patent. In an attempt to resolve this paradox, we conducted an inductive analysis of 11 foreign firms that patent in such a setting, using the...

Purpose – Through examining the development of the video compact disc player industry in China, this article aims to explore the main characteristics of world-first innovation and identify four success factors for innovation followers to launch world-first products in catching-up countries. Design/methodology/approach – This article takes the form...

Purpose How does the internationalization of R&D influence the development of dynamic capabilities? Based on the observation that Chinese high‐tech companies internationalize parts of their R&D activities to Western countries before they have established sound domestic R&D capabilities and in opposition to other held beliefs about internationalizat...

The development of technological capability (TC) is critical for manufacturing firms in high-tech industries. Kim's [1980. Stages of development of industrial technology in a developing country: a model. Research Policy 9, 254–277] model of acquisition, assimilation, and improvement is widely accepted to explain TC development in developing economi...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess how technology‐based university research drives innovation in Europe and China. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on extensive theoretical research and literature reviews, and presents a framework based on theories on networking, knowledge creation and innovation. It then introduces three E...

What are the secrets of competitive R&D on a global scale? Based on empirical research with hundreds of R&D executives from more than 80 companies and 1000 R&D laboratories, the authors present new concepts and trends in global R&D management. Case studies from 22 best-practice companies illustrate how to put these concepts into practice. Adding ne...

Providing enabling technologies for global networking and innovation, Fujitsu is one of the catalysts for global innovation, an excellent example for global research and development.

Improving the flow of innovation and closing the productivity gap in research and development are the foremost challenges in the pharmaceutical industry and represent the single-most important direction for future activities in pharmaceutical innovation. Given some major technological changes in drug design and delivery, the pharmaceutical industry...

In March of 1999, Hewlett-Packard announced the strategic realignment of the company into two independent companies. These have been named, Agilent Technologies and Hewlett-Packard. The then president and CEO, Lewis Platt, said ?We are taking this action to sharpen the strategic focus of our businesses, improve their agility and increase their resp...

SAP was founded in 1972 by five former IBM systems engineers. SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software solutions. Today, more than 36,200 customers in over 120 countries run more than 96,400 installations of SAP® software — from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite solutions for global or...

Global collaborative research is now the well-recognized, common and definite necessity among high-technology industries world-wide, because of the following reasons. First of all, the rapidly changing advanced technologies require all participants to be constantly prepared to be competitive at the front-end of such new technologies. High-technolog...

The Swiss Reinsurance Company (Swiss Re) is one of the leading reinsurance organizations, and the world’s largest life reinsurer. Swiss Re was founded in 1863 in Zurich. Today, the company has more than 70 offices in 30 countries worldwide. Swiss Re has maintained the highest official security rating, “AAA”, for decades. The reinsurance business is...

Today, more than 2,300 drug candidates are currently in clinical trials or at the FDA for review (PhRMA 2007). By far, the most drugs in the pipelines of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies target the therapeutic area of oncology which covers all types of cancer related diseases. Cardiovascular, central nervous system and respiratory related...

Despite its high R&D intensity, the pharmaceutical industry is facing an increasingly dire situation. On average, only 1 out of 10,000 substances becomes a marketable product. And only 3 out of 10 drugs generate revenues that meet or exceed average R&D costs (see Grabowski, Vernon, DiMasi 2002).

The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an internationally operating company which strives to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the information industry’s most advanced systems, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices, and microelectronics. IBM translates these advanced technolog...

Guided by the company’s „Kyosei“ philosophy, i.e. living and working together for the common good, Canon has been in operation since its foundation in 1937. In 1997 the company celebrated its 60th anniversary employing more than 75’000 people worldwide.

ABB is a global US$ 34 billion electrical engineering Group serving customers in electric power generation, transmission and distribution, industrial and building systems, and rail transportation.

Leica was formed by the joint venture of Wild-Leitz and Cambridge Instruments in 1990. Together, they have a history of some 180 years. Today three independent companies share the Leica brand: Leica Camera AG, Solms, Germany; Leica Microsystems GmbH, Wetzlar, Germany and Leica Geosystems AG, Heerbrugg, Switzerland.

Unisys serves organizations in 100 countries. Their 50,000 clients around the world include financial services, banking, airlines and transportation companies, government agencies, communications providers, and other commercial market leaders. Unisys is one of a select group of companies with the broad portfolio of services, technologies, and third...