Innovation and Technology Management in Brazilian Subsidiaries in the Electro-Electronic Industry

In an increasingly competitive and challenging market, multinational corporations have evolved to allow or to actively encourage each subsidiaries to become more involved in the local generation of knowledge and innovation for the benefit of the global corporation. Subsidiaries, in turn, seek more responsibilities and opportunities in order to acquire more complex types of competences and to assure their survival and competitiveness. Thus, subsidiaries have been active contributors to the decisions and competitiveness of their wider corporate groups. In subsidiaries that acquire competence- creating mandates, the way in which technology and innovation are managed changes with their expanded responsibilities. This paper draws on an on-going case study of six subsidiaries installed in Brazil operating in the electro-electronics industries. The objective of the research is to compare these subsidiaries in order to better understand their actual technological innovation management practices (TIP), and to comprehend the connection between TIP and evolution towards more strategic roles on the subsidiaries. The preliminary research findings suggest significant TIP differences between the subsidiaries studied, and that the practices of innovation management are closer to the market (mostly product development related). Indeed, there is little presence of practices related to longer-term technology research.