Innovating from the global south: practices to connect local and global networks of innovation

  • Authors:

  • Ruy Cervantes;Bonnie Nardi

  • Affiliations:

  • University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Intercultural collaboration
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

High-tech industries across the Global South (emerging countries such as China, India, and Mexico) are making great efforts to become innovators that create their own products for global markets. Cities such as Guadalajara and Bangalore, which traditionally have been used by multinational corporations as manufacturing or service delivery centers, are now emerging as centers of innovation. The transition is part of a global transition connecting emerging centers of innovation with those in advanced economies. However, this phenomenon has not been studied at the practical level: we do not know how people materially make the social connections that enable them to move forward as innovators. We propose a comparative study of the practices used in the embedded systems industry to connect to local and global networks in Mexico and India. We chose the embedded systems industry because it is dynamic, globally distributed, knowledge intensive, and highly interdependent with other sectors. The research has two aims (1) to understand how social connections are created and sustained across global markets in emerging and established centers of innovation, and (2) an empirical basis for proposing new digital media technologies and organizational designs to support the development of centers of innovation in the Global South. Digital media tools will have an instrumental role in helping develop the work relationships and coordination needed to drive innovation in these emerging centers.