MIB Master of International Business: Global Management of Innovation & Knowledge 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which framework categorizes national innovation systems by the role of government, industry, and universities in producing and diffusing knowledge?
- Porter's Diamond Model
- Triple Helix Model (Correct answer)
- Uppsala Internalization Model
- Resource-Based View
Correct answer: Triple Helix Model
The Triple Helix Model (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff) examines the interplay among government, academia, and industry as the three helices driving national innovation.
Question 2: A global firm's R&D unit in Germany develops a process innovation. To transfer this to a subsidiary in Brazil, which barrier is most likely to arise?
- Currency fluctuation
- Causal ambiguity making tacit knowledge hard to transfer (Correct answer)
- Tariff barriers on software
- Antitrust regulations
Correct answer: Causal ambiguity making tacit knowledge hard to transfer
Causal ambiguity occurs when the reasons why a practice works are unclear, making tacit knowledge difficult to replicate across cultural and organizational contexts.
Question 3: Which intellectual property strategy involves deliberately publishing innovations to prevent competitors from patenting them?
- Patent pooling
- Defensive publication (Correct answer)
- Cross-licensing
- Trade secret protection
Correct answer: Defensive publication
Defensive publication places innovations in the public domain, creating prior art that blocks competitors from obtaining patents on the same technology.
Question 4: In Nonaka's SECI model of knowledge creation, 'Combination' refers to:
- Converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge through dialogue
- Combining different bodies of explicit knowledge to create new explicit knowledge (Correct answer)
- Internalizing explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge through practice
- Sharing tacit knowledge through shared experience
Correct answer: Combining different bodies of explicit knowledge to create new explicit knowledge
Combination involves reconfiguring existing explicit knowledge (e.g., documents, databases) through sorting, adding, and categorizing to produce new explicit knowledge.
Question 5: What distinguishes a 'frugal innovation' from a standard product innovation?
- It uses more advanced materials to reduce weight
- It is designed to deliver core functionality at significantly lower cost for price-sensitive markets (Correct answer)
- It focuses exclusively on luxury markets
- It requires government subsidies to be viable
Correct answer: It is designed to deliver core functionality at significantly lower cost for price-sensitive markets
Frugal innovation strips products to essential features and minimizes costs, targeting consumers in emerging markets with limited purchasing power.
Question 6: A firm decides to license its technology to a local partner in a new market rather than establishing its own subsidiary. The primary knowledge-related risk is:
- Excessive royalty payments
- Unintended technology transfer that enables the partner to become a competitor (Correct answer)
- Difficulty in repatriating profits
- Loss of distribution exclusivity
Correct answer: Unintended technology transfer that enables the partner to become a competitor
Licensing exposes proprietary technology to the licensee, who may develop competing capabilities, especially in markets with weak IP enforcement.
Question 7: Which metric best measures how effectively a firm is commercializing its innovation investments?
- Number of patents filed
- R&D spending as a % of revenue
- Revenue from products launched in the last three years (Correct answer)
- Headcount in the R&D department
Correct answer: Revenue from products launched in the last three years
Revenue from recently launched products (new product vitality index) directly measures whether innovation investments are translating into market success.
MIB Master of International Business: Global Management of Innovation & Knowledge 3
Which framework categorizes national innovation systems by the role of government, industry, and universities in producing and diffusing knowledge?