Innovation and domestic multinationals

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Innovation in domestic multinationals in the Nordic countries

Domus is a new Nordic project on innovation. The overall aim is to study the role of large domestic multinationals in the national innovation system.

Domestic multinational companies play an important role as competence nodes and gravitation centres, and are of great importance for the innovative capabilities of customers and suppliers (including SMEs) and for competence development in knowledge institutions (incl. cooperating institutes and universities).

The project is to map the effects such companies have on the overall capabilities of national innovation systems. It will also investigate the effects a multinational presence has on the home activities of such companies. Hence it is, for instance, important to find out the key factors that influence the domestic multinational companies' decision to locate or not to locate headquarter functions and other associated activities in the Nordic countries, and to what extent national ownership is of importance.

This project will study the role of domestic multinationals along two dimensions:

1. The role of domestic multinationals - normally in the form of larger companies - in the national innovation system and their effects on learning and innovation among other actors (suppliers, customers, knowledge institutions etc).

2. The effect that the international activities of these companies have on their function as competence and innovation providers in the national innovation systems. The study is also to take inter-Nordic relations into consideration, and use the similarities and dissimilarities of the national innovation systems in this area for comparisons

More on Domus.

The final reports will be published in 2006.

Added 2012: Final Domus summary report.

The Interactsite is published by NIFU STEP, Centre for Innovation Research, Norway. Editor: Per M. Koch,