Although MNEs create inventions both internally and collaboratively with partners as well as within and across countries, we know very little about the effects that combining such inventive activities have on their profitability. This study develops an invention-based perspective that considers how MNEs' profitability is influenced by the ways they organize the development of inventions across organizational boundaries (internally or collaboratively) and geographic boundaries (within or across countries). This perspective postulates that profitability is not merely driven by advantageous technological endowments but also by how such technological assets have been created. Accordingly, it explains why specific combinations of inventive activities across the two boundaries affect the likelihood of creating breakthrough inventions differently, provide different revenue and cost advantages, and have different effects on MNEs’ profitability. It further explains why cross-country inventions contribute more to profitability when they are internalized, while within-country inventions are more profitable when they are created collaboratively.

We examine how emerging country business groups overcome various technological constraints and succeed in enhancing their performance. Our theoretical contribution lies in showing how the ability of a business unit to benefit from intra-group technology transfer depends on the idiosyncratic manner in which the group geographically configures its network of units. The findings reveal that the geographic dispersion and concentration of the units of a group alter both the ability and willingness of its business units to transfer technologies to (or receive technologies from) other units and subsequently result in different performance outcomes. The location of a business unit also determines whether or not a unit competes with other fellow units and, consequently, influences how much a unit benefits from the technologies held by the group.

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As important actors in global value chains (GVCs), multinational enterprises exercise coordination and control over worldwide commodity, production, service, workforce and knowledge mobility. A level playing field for all GVC stakeholders remains absent. We argue for empowering subordinated stakeholders in the design of inclusive GVC governance, as a necessary condition, to harness the power of GVCs that enable many firms to internationalise in the first place. We propose a Framework for Intervention at the level of civil society and five actions, using a revived form of multilateralism, to empower the economic “South” and fundamentally anchor change for human development.