Efforts to engage customers in cocreating new products have garnered much research attention from studies documenting customer cocreation’s (CC’s) positive impact on firm innovation and performance. Less research, however, has counterbalanced the bright side with the potential dark side of CC, especially as a strategy for multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in foreign markets. This study examines how MNC subsidiaries’ CC affects new product innovativeness and knowledge leakage to competitors. Adopting a broader agency perspective to recognize that subsidiaries often do not perform up to headquarters’ expectations due to both self-serving opportunism and honest incompetence, this study explores how CC effects are contingent on MNCs’ global management mechanisms. Using a dyadic managerial survey of 238 MNC subsidiaries, the authors find that MNCs can control knowledge leakage by implementing proper global integration and local adaptation mechanisms. However, CC may not improve new product innovativeness, except when the subsidiary has low local research-and-development staff influence. This study contributes to the CC literature by showing its benefits, challenges, and boundary conditions as a growing MNC innovation strategy.

中文翻译：

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通过外国子公司吸引客户参与新产品开发：跨国公司全球整合和本地适应机制的影响

记录客户共同创造（CC）对公司创新和绩效的积极影响的研究吸引了客户共同创造新产品的努力，引起了很多研究关注。然而，很少有研究用CC的潜在优势与潜在的不利优势相抵消，特别是作为在国外市场运营的跨国公司（MNC）的战略。这项研究探讨了跨国公司子公司的CC如何影响新产品的创新性以及向竞争对手的知识泄漏。本研究采用更广泛的代理视角来认识到，由于自我服务的机会主义和诚实的无能而导致子公司通常无法达到总部的期望，因此本研究探讨了CC效应如何取决于跨国公司的全球管理机制。使用对238家跨国公司子公司的二元管理调查，作者发现，跨国公司可以通过实施适当的全球整合和本地适应机制来控制知识泄漏。但是，CC可能无法提高新产品的创新性，除非子公司在本地研发人员中的影响较小。这项研究通过展示其作为不断发展的跨国公司创新策略的优势，挑战和边界条件，为CC文献做出了贡献。