GLOBAL DREAMS — LOCAL TEAMS: RHETORIC AND REALITIES OF TRANSNATIONAL INNOVATION

Abstract

This article challenges notions of transnational innovation and global project teams as imperatives for modern management of innovation. Proceeding from an account of the localised dynamics of a radical technology innovation project in the early 1970s, the article reviews the strategy theorists of the 1990s, who proclaimed the virtues of cross-border innovation processes. Their expectations of international synergies and world-wide learning are confronted with the realities and local harvesting in a transatlantic innovation project at a European multinational. An account follows of a radical innovation project at the firm, which was the scene of the introductory study. Now, 25 years later this industrial technology company had become part of a far-flung multinational, which according to popular management theorists was the model of international innovation. The case account highlights the surprising similarities between the two projects, and the sustained importance of intensive local interaction and commitment in uncertain innovation projects.