In my own research, teaching and consulting experience I have to combine lessons from the field in a relatively inductive and open fashion with theoretical frameworks and conceptual arguments. The skills to deal with theory and conceptualization are a direct result of my formal education - reading, learning and conversations with other PhD students.

Getting global innovation projects right is really important as they create competitive advantage two ways. When the knowledge for an innovation is from different sites around the world, it's very much more difficult for competitors to copy these innovation - they'd have to access the same knowledge from the same places. Secondly, costs and time to market can be significantly reduced leading to first mover advantage through parallel development in global projects.

Implementing any major changes to the way companies operate requires time and determination and the shift to globally integrated innovation is no exception - it calls for new capabilities to be built, changes in the structure of the innovation organization, new systems, processes and mindsets. The scope and scale of this task shouldn't prevent executives from starting down the path of change as the systemic nature of innovation activities means that every single element of change that's brought about will make a difference.

Data show that for a variety of reasons including M&A activity, legacy and growth into emerging markets, the size of most firms' innovation footprints or networks is increasing. Obviously, the bigger the network, the greater the management, co-ordination and running costs.

There is a difficult transition in management from being the knowledgeable expert and the problem solver to becoming a process architect. The importance of good process in organizations is undervalued and people seldom get credited for putting good processes in place. It makes sense therefore that C-level executives don't want to delegate expertise and problem solving tasks which help them to "shine" and attract widespread recognition.

I recall a conversation with the CEO of large electrical equipment MNC in which he began by asking me to guess how many innovation centres his firm had around the world. My guess was nowhere near the 160 that turned out to be the answer. Not surprisingly this CEO recognized that his firm's ability to innovate was being hampered by the huge size of their footprint which brought few benefits as it was inefficient, there was duplication across sites and competition between them. In this and most other cases, the costs of the expanded footprint outweigh the benefits.

In my own research, teaching and consulting experience I have to combine lessons from the field in a relatively inductive and open fashion with theoretical frameworks and conceptual arguments. The skills to deal with theory and conceptualization are a direct result of my formal education - reading, learning and conversations with other PhD students.