Strategic learning and leveraging of foreign technology by entrepreneurial firms in the technological development process : case studies from the Sri Lankan garment accessories industry

This paper studies the technology learning process of entrepreneurial local firms in order to understand how these firms have overcome the technological constraints in the process of initial firm creation and sustained technological development. By adopting a multiple case study method, it analyses three case firms in the Sri Lankan garment accessories manufacturing industry from a structural perspective and argues that these successful local firms strategically manage their foreign partnerships in the technology acquisition process and adopt dynamic management strategies in order to overcome technological constraints. It finds that these local partner firms exploit external innovative capacity with the foreign partner firms at the initial stage and later opt to perform cooperatively with the foreign partner firm or exploit the internal skills and capabilities independently depending on the potential of technological contribution from the foreign partner firms during the partnership. The latter option is conditional to the level of local capabilities and industry and market dynamics. The proposed analytical framework based on the empirical analysis has implications for local innovation management strategies of firms and also contribute to the empirical literature by revealing how strategically entrepreneurial local firms in a technologically constrained context overcome systemic disadvantages of weak public research.