2020: Innovation, Strategy, Entrepreneurship (ISE) Research Seminar

Adaptation Experience and New Foreign Market Entry: A Dynamic Capability Perspective

One of the most fundamental choices a MNE has to make is in which geographic markets it wants to be active. Building on insights from the dynamic capabilities and experiential learning literatures we try to shed new light on MNEs location choices by developing predictions concerning the effect of adaptation experience on the likelihood that a MNE enters a new potential host market. Namely, we propose that geographic adaptation experience and product adaptation experience increase the likelihood of a MNE entering a new potential foreign market. Moreover, we propose that the level of environmental uncertainty and volatility as well as how distant the potential host market is from the MNE’s home country act as important contingency factors of these effects. We find general support for our predictions using a sample covering 12,207 firms originating from 48 different home countries over a 7-year period.

Presenter

Ralf Wilden is an Associate Professor of Strategy & Innovation at the Macquarie Business School, Department of Marketing in Sydney, Australia. As longest serving member of the Academy of Management’s STR Global Scholars (upon request by the EC to extend his term), he has served the division as its representative for Oceania since 2016. 

His contributions to the area of dynamic capabilities have focused on answering the question of how organizations can benefit from resource integration processes to improve performance. He incorporates dynamic capability thinking with (open) innovation and co-creation literature to investigate managerially relevant problems, such as business model innovation, and the impact of market shaping and reconfiguring activities on innovative behavior. He is also increasingly interested in questions of strategic decision making, with an emphasis how managers make decisions under uncertainty. He has received industry funding in excess of $300,000.

He received his PhD from the University of Technology, Sydney and has worked for multinational organizations in the automotive (BMW Group), telecommunications (o2 Telefónica) and consulting industries. Ralf's work has been recognized by several international and national associations, invitations to speak at industry conferences, and he authored journal publications in outlets such as Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Service Research, Long Range Planning, and Strategic Organization. 

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