Intra-bound Innovation and Strategizing in Service MNCs

This chapter explores open innovation and explicit and emergent strategizing in Norwegian and foreign-based multinationals in the oil and gas service sectors. The chapter combines literature on open innovation and strategizing to shed light on mechanisms within firms regarding openness in innovation. Findings from 10 multinational companies demonstrate that company acquisition and location sourcing are explicit strategizing activities based at headquarters and expose inbound innovation in line with existing literature. Everyday practices on the periphery show that activities acquisition and knowledge sourcing are patterns of emergent strategizing that are performed locally and expose intra-bound innovation, nuancing existing open innovation categories. Our findings also nuance the understanding of strategizing from headquarters by demonstrating ambidexterity of both center and periphery. Strategizing is both centralized and dispersed and there are inbound and intra-bound innovation in use between the headquarters and the periphery that are initiated and evolve from both places, complementing each other. By combining research on strategy with open innovation, we expose center and periphery ambidexterity and provide open innovation research with an understanding of push and pull forces for intra-bound innovation.