International private-public collaboration for technology development and knowledge generation: the development of an automatic moulding press

Abstract

International collaboration alliances have been fostered since the end of the last century to improve the competitiveness of international firms. During most of the 20th century technology transfer was normally carried out from the developed to the developing countries. In the current global context inverse technology transfer situations are incipient phenomena that can benefit the organisations involved. In this work we present and discuss the organisational learning issues resulting from an international collaboration project between a multinational firm from the USA and an R&D centre from a Mexican public university for the development of an automatic moulding press (AMP). A successful case is presented and some interesting results are provided. While the US firm obtained a technology system without distracting their own intellectual capital resources, the Mexican counterpart obtained knowledge from the learning process by performing the project activities, and at the same time both organisations learned how to interact with each other. Probably, in the near future we will see an increment of this type of international collaborations looking for open innovation and global competitiveness.