IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02312402.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Product innovation in emerging economies : product architecture and organisational capabilities in Geely and Tata

Author

Listed:
  • Hua Wang

    (EM - EMLyon Business School)

  • Chris Kimble

    (Kedge BS - Kedge Business School)

  • Giovanni Balcet

    (UNITO - Università degli studi di Torino = University of Turin)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a perspective on the sources of innovation that underlie the creation of low-cost products in emerging economies. It differs from previous analyses in its emphasis on the influence that country specific factors can have, opening the possibility that similar firms, with similar products and similar goals may follow fundamentally different trajectories. It presents two case studies from the automobile industry in China and India, Geely and Tata that show precisely this phenomenon. Building on its capability for flexibility and responsiveness and the existence of a loosely-coupled network of suppliers, Geely took a quasi-open approach to the product architecture for its vehicles. Tata on the other hand followed a broadly closed integral approach to product architecture, building on its vertically integrated structure and tradition of frugal innovation. Based on these case studies, existing theory concerning the co-evolution of product architecture and organisational capabilities and using a process of abductive reasoning, we present a framework that can be used to explain this divergence. The framework highlights the interactions between a product's architecture, a firm's organisational capabilities and country specific external factors such as institutions, industry, markets and technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Hua Wang & Chris Kimble & Giovanni Balcet, 2018. "Product innovation in emerging economies : product architecture and organisational capabilities in Geely and Tata," Post-Print hal-02312402, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02312402
    DOI: 10.1504/IJATM.2018.097348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02312402. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.