Technological Innovations and Firm Internationalisation

Abstract

This paper explores the relevance of technological innovations for the internationalisation of manufacturing firms. It differentiates between two technological innovations: eco-innovations and generic-technological innovations (i. e., intelligent manufacturing). By pooling the Flash Eurobarometer-415 and -433 surveys, we use a broad firm-level sample of 4954 European and nonEuropean (the US and Switzerland) manufacturing firms. Appling the Heckman selection model, the findings indicate that eco-innovations positively affect the decision of the firms to internationalise whilst showing no significant impact on the level of international operations. On the other hand, generic-technological innovations positively affect both the decision and the level of global operations.