Does internationalization matter? Comparing the innovative performance of Brazilian multinational and non-multinational companies

Abstract

Using data from the Brazilian Innovation Survey (PINTEC) and from a reference group composed of 110 Brazilian internationalised companies, the article applies a Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to obtain a control group of non-internationalised companies with similar characteristics to the reference group. PSM tests the following hypotheses: internationalised companies introduce more process and product innovations that display higher degrees of novelty, better technical enhancements and better organisational and marketing innovations. The results show that internationalisation matters to Brazilian companies only in terms of higher-level innovation novelty. The Brazilian case reveals also that the development of domestic technological leadership is a precondition for internationalisation even when it is strongly supported by public policies. Finally, internationalisation matters for developing countries to catch up as long as companies are able to explore technological niches and acquire rare resources of knowledge to get a technological leadership at global scale.