Smashing local boundaries for sustain companies’ innovativeness: the role of international R&D teams

Recognizing internationalization as one of the more recently debated topics in the management field, this paper aims at investigating the influence of international R&D teams on companies’ innovativeness. More specifically, combining the transaction cost approach, the international product life cycle model, and the eclectic paradigm, an integrative research model with four associated hypotheses is proposed to study international R&D teams. Hypotheses are tested using data collected on a sample of 218 Italian companies with the aim of enriching the ongoing debate about the role of international R&D teams in sustaining companies’ innovativeness. The research shows that the number of international team projects, the number of R&D employees from foreign countries, and the number of meetings during the year for international knowledge sharing positively influence companies’ innovative outcomes. Accordingly, results emphasize the central role of knowledge contamination and collaboration for promoting companies’ innovation.