Abstract
In this chapter, we show that tech giants organize what we define as corporate innovation systems from which they appropriate knowledge that they transform into intangible assets garnering intellectual rents. We define corporate innovation systems as systems that are organized and controlled by an intellectual monopoly and include a multitude of more or less subordinate organizations participating in production and innovation networks. The chapter studies selected US and Chinese tech giants’ corporate innovation systems through an analysis of their scientific publications’ co-authoring organizations, their participation in the open-source software environment and start-up acquisitions.
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Notes
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Of course, the concept CIS could as well be applied to a much wider set of corporations (even to small local firms engaged in innovation and integrated in local or national networks).
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Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/09/21/10487/why-americas-top-mental-health-researcher-joined-alphabet/ last access October 5, 2020.
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Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/news/why-biomedical-superstars-are-signing-on-with-google-1.18600 last access October 3, 2020.
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Moreover, Alibaba's and Tencent’s executives have more transnational than national corporate ties. These transnational ties vis-à-vis total corporate ties are—in percentage—greater than those of US big corporations’ board members (de Graaff, 2020).
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Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18534687/microsoft-windows-10-linux-kernel-feature last access December 21, 2019.
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Haltiwanger et al. (2014) showed that the number of young firms (aged up to five years) in the US in the high-tech sector is declining since 2000, while for the overall private sector this figure remains relatively flat until 2008. Since then, the fall is steeper for high-tech than for the overall private sector.
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Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-cloud-idUSN1E7A727Q20111109 last access February 27, 2019.
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Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/business/2018/07/07/chinese-and-us-tech-giants-go-at-it-in-emerging-markets last access April 19, 2020.
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Rikap, C., Lundvall, BÅ. (2021). Tech Giants’ Corporate Innovation Systems. In: The Digital Innovation Race. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89443-6_3
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