Abstract
Taking an impetus from the fact that multinational enterprises around the world are increasingly investing in human capital to boost innovation this introductory chapter explores the connection between human capital and innovation in the globalising world. It argues that the whole ecosystem of innovation encompasses through different levels of human capital analysis. It introduces eight excellent chapters, authored by a range of budding to mature scholars, that explore this relationship between human capital and innovation at manager, firm, industry and country levels.
The volume of investment in the development of human capital by multinational enterprises (MNEs) as they innovate and compete for markets around the world has seen a sharp increase since the advent of the twenty-first century. At the same time, MNEs rummage around for novel means of governance that facilitate innovation and an efficient utilisation of human capital. MNEs are pursuing integrated business models, namely globally linked and locally leveraged (Bartlett & Beamish, 2015), reinventing the organisation in the form of a global factory (Buckley, 2011a, 2011b; Buckley & Prashantham, 2016) and, as key strategies in this regard, orchestrating head office efforts with that of subsidiaries (Mudambi, 2011). Consequently, the business world witness architectural, radical as well as disruptive innovations (Pisano, 2015) in the market place that profoundly affects many industries. Consider, for example, the cases of Apple in the communications (cell phone) industry, Uber in transportation, and Amazon in retail.
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Munjal, S., Kundu, S. (2017). Exploring the Connection Between Human Capital and Innovation in the Globalising World. In: Kundu, S., Munjal, S. (eds) Human Capital and Innovation. Palgrave Studies in Global Human Capital Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56561-7_1
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