RQ1. What was Goodyear’s innovation trajectory in the face of turbulence in its
external environment?
RQ2. How has the geography of Goodyear’s innovative activity changed over time?
RQ3. How have the upstream and downstream ends of Goodyear’s innovation value
chain evolved over time?
To answer these questions we rely on a longitudinal dataset of utility patents, design
patents and trademarks drawn from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
These research questions, their respective conceptual underpinnings and the major
findings of this study are presented in Table I.
The context of our study is compelling for several theoretical and practical reasons.
First, traditional models of innovation and strategy posit that R&D efforts tend to focus
on (exploratory) product innovation during an industry’s early years followed by
(exploitative) process innovation during maturity (Abernathy and Utterback, 1978).
However, as the technology threshold rises, firms may continue to pursue exploratory
innovation as they “make the leap” to newer generations of a product (Mudambi and
Swift, 2014). Second, over the past several decades, MNEs in advanced economies, like
the USA, have come under increasing pressure from imitators in emerging market
economies. Little is known about whether and how MNEs in advanced economies
change their models of innovation in response to these threats. The research questions in
this paper address both these critical issues.