ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to the debates on potential differences in innovation behaviour between multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging and developed countries, including subsidiary-innovation motivations, types, and connections to headquarters (HQ) and local economies. Reverse innovation, innovations that are first introduced in an emerging country before being adopted in developed regions, and innovation that is designed and invented in emerging markets and later transferred into advanced markets, are also increasingly important. ‘Developed’ countries include for example the USA and Western Europe while ‘emerging’ economies include Brazil and Eastern Europe. Qualitative research is uniquely suited to ‘open the black box’ of organisational processes, the how, who and why of individual and collective, coordinated action as it unfolds over time in context. In qualitative research, instruments are traditionally derived from the properties of the setting and its actors' views of them.
