Title: Typical modes and characteristics of reverse innovation: a multiple cases study on five enterprises operated in China

Authors: Zongxi Zheng; Jin Chen; Gang Zheng

Addresses: School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China ' School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China ' School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Abstract: Along with the internationalisation, the products designed for emerging market start to enter the market of developed country. Reverse innovations become more common. Study on reverse innovation worth of great theoretical and practical meaning. This article summarised three typical modes and concluded four characteristics of reverse innovation through multiple cases study of H3C, King-Mazon, Cisco, HP and GE. The three modes of reverse innovation are product-driven reverse innovation, capital-driven reverse innovation and cooperation-driven reverse innovation. The four characteristics are: 1) reverse innovation is usually an incremental innovation of low-end product; 2) most of reverse innovation products have high cost performance; 3) the advantage of reverse innovation mainly come from the R&D and manufacture process; 4) align with external organisations can accelerate reverse innovation process.

Keywords: reverse innovation modes; emerging markets; developing countries; developed countries; multinational enterprises; MNEs; China; incremental innovation; high cost performance; R&D; research and development; manufacturing processes.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2016.080544

International Journal of Technology Management, 2016 Vol.72 No.1/2/3, pp.43 - 60

Received: 04 Jul 2015
Accepted: 31 Jan 2016
Published online: 29 Nov 2016 *

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