Resumo

The study investigates the location strategies of research and development (R&D) centers in the automotive industry in emerging countries. We observed how organizational factors, group strategies and host country characteristics can influence the location of R&D activities of multinational companies (MNCs) in emerging countries. A study was carried out in the Volkswagen group, covering its subsidiaries in China, Brazil, India, Eastern Europe and Mexico, in addition to the headquarters in Germany.

When it comes to defining the global R&D localization plans for the automotive industry, the research question answered throughout the development of this project is: how organizational factors, group strategies and host country characteristics influence the location of R&D activities in a Multinational company in a certain emerging country?

The internationalization of R&D activities aims primarily to expand the company´s capacity of innovation, through dispersed geographic access to knowledge, as well as diversifying and complementing its technologies, which increases its competitiveness in global markets. Another frequent focus of studies is the geographic dispersion and development models of R&D internationalization. In this perspective, Zedtwitz and Gassmann established primary models of the internationalization of R&D, used in this work.

We chose a qualitative methodology and a case study approach. This is appropriate, since we built propositions that can serve as a first step of a later and more extensive hypotheses test study. The research context is the automotive industry in the emerging countries where Volkswagen has operations and carries out R&D activities. We triangulated data from three different sources: multiple semi-structured interviews with VW key executives, internal documents provided by the company and data available on specialized websites.

This study reinforces the conclusions of Zedtwitz and Gassmann, that the automotive industry, in general, adopts the R&D Hub model. We found that when markets become large enough to house an MNC subsidiary, local units initiate R&D processes, firstly for local product adaptation; and as they gain know-how and come to rely on the trust of the headquarters, they receive greater autonomy, start developing new products for the local market, or even for the more advanced markets, characterizing cases of reverse innovation.

There is a clear movement to decentralize such R&D activities, with increased responsibility and autonomy of the R&D areas of subsidiaries in emerging countries, which start to carry out more and more relevant projects, in a movement to increase reverse innovation, which becomes a trend to persist in the near future. China and the headquarters in Germany focus on R&D of electrical vehicles, while Brazil has become a R&D leader on conventional (not electrical) cars.

Zedtwitz, M. & Gassmann, O. (2016). Global corporate R&D to and from emerging economies. Hertenstein, P. & Williamson, P. J. (2018). The role of suppliers in enabling differing innovation strategies of competing multinationals from emerging and advanced economies: German and Chinese automotive firms compared. Technovation Diess, H. (2019a). China is the new automotive powerhouse. Wolfsburg, GER Zedtwitz, M., Corsi, S., Søberg, P. V., & Frega, R. (2015). A typology of reverse innovation. Global Innovation Index (2019) Rankings. Geneva among other