Managing Global Innovation

[ CHAPTER FOUR ]

The Barriers to Integration

In the previous chapters, we focused on strategies, tools, and processes aimed to optimize a company’s innovation footprint. But having an ability to access knowledge from around the world in the most efficient, effective manner is of limited value without the capabilities to integrate and leverage that knowledge across the organization (see chapter 1 and figure 1-2). Take, for example, Snecma, which we discussed in chapter 2. The distinctive science Snecma found in Russia would have remained there had it not created the mechanisms and processes to first absorb the new knowledge and then integrate it into its own innovation pipeline. Similarly, Novartis’s Institute for Tropical Diseases, which we ...