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For global corporations, achieving a differential advantage in terms of product design means designing an offer based on the best interpretation of specific distinctive characteristics, and to this end, information must be collected in continuum from the market, about customers and competitors. Corporate imitation and innovation processes have come to represent a primary condition to stand up to global competition on the markets, which takes the shape of identifying by the design management products with 'new' features to propose to customers that change in time and space. A global firm's success is conditioned by its ability to manage the system of corporate intangible assets (corporate culture, corporate identity and information system), and product intangible assets (product design, brand equity and pre/aftersales services). In global firms, design is a strategic element linking the product intangibles and the firm's intangible assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the early Sixties, and yet in the Seventies, competition imposed significant advancements in design and reengineering of products for the intense export policy into international markets pursued by large corporations. The nowadays globalisation phase (competitive globalisation) is characterized by the R&D activities as a key-intangible asset, whose role is to develop the innovation and imitation policies of the large corporations, to anticipate demand trends and the initiatives of the competition, even collaborating with key competitors on particular projects. Over-supplied markets emphasises the critical nature of research for customers empowerment because the condition of excess of production presents strongly unstable demand and unstable supply structures. In over-supply competition, research for customers empowerment maximises the opportunity to produce goods focused on design, smart innovation and creative imitation to satisfy specific demand bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation has been driven by multinationals' capital and technology and produced a structural change in business networks. In this sense, one of the most important changes in industrial organisation is the transition from multinational corporations (MNCs) to global networks particularly focused on management of innovation and creative imitation. The global competitive landscapes of innovation and imitation have significantly changed the relative position of many Nation-States. The US corporations have changed their worldwide competitive position. Meanwhile the globalisation has expanded the market-space of corporations headquartered in countries with a high propensity to innovation (e.g. the Japanese companies), and has also promoted the growth of new countries, especially in the Far East (e.g. South Korea, India, Taiwan), where domestic firms have favorable conditions (especially in terms of social responsibility and low labor costs) to develop advanced skills for imitation and creative imitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In open markets where competition is strong, innovation loses its role of 'ideological hierarchy' over imitation; both have the common goal of maximising company profitability, with the constraint of optimising performance results in the very short term. With these objectives and result constraints, the success of research and development activities is measured by the real improvement in the competitive supply potential, expressed by indicators such as time-to-market or patent use rate. The capacity to exploit the competition acquires prime importance, while the capacity to accumulate know-how becomes less important (for example with the traditional indicators of the number of patents per year). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 80s, given the markets globalisation springing up (product globalisation), the 'core activity' of R&D was focused on corporate internal structures. In the 90s and 2000s the new globalisation phase (firm globalisation), the R&D has faced a remarkable transformation. In fact the R&D was no longer centralized in the headquarters, but localized according to the network logic, with a competitive advantage optimization in reference to specific local companies. Finally, since the early 2000s, a third globalisation phase (finance globalisation), has determined a new and important shift in research and development activities. The globalisation of markets pushed the firms to face not only increasing competitive dynamics but also to handle and to manage the limits deriving from the global economies of scale, recessive markets and, frequently, from the over-supply condition. In the nowadays globalisation phase (competitive globalisation), characterized by a widespread recession, and by many over-supplied markets, the R&D structures assume a new key-role for the firms development and represent a continuous stimulus for the competitive dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]