ABSTRACT
Corporate technological diversification, as the contributions in this book set out to illustrate, is a multifaceted and complex issue and research in this area branches out in a variety of directions, driven by a host of questions. While technological diversification has come into the spotlight as an emerging research area quite recently, the phenomenon has been developing in large firms over a much longer period of time as discussed in the historical overview provided in Chapter 10 by Cantwell in this book. It is therefore not surprising that the state of knowledge is so far mostly focused on uncovering and describing the complexity and determinants of corporate technological diversification and its implications for other research areas, such as economic performance, internationalisation, alliances and managerial issues. As is also characteristic of an emerging field, the existing work reflects a continuing refinement and search for new methodology as the concepts under investigation get defined more succinctly and consensus builds over how the problem can be distinguished from other related issues. The purpose of this chapter is to tie together some of the major insights of the work presented in this volume amidst all the complexity, and also to outline the areas into which future research efforts may be usefully heading. In the course of our discussion, we highlight six key themes.
