CHAPTER 7

How Companies Innovate: Intellectual Property and Roadmaps

The major burden of automotive innovation now falls on companies in the supply chain. Mobilizing their manufacturing capabilities and engineering expertise is thus the key to developing new vehicles that meet the demands for enhanced safety, improved fuel efficiency, and lower emissions traced in the previous chapter. Suppliers face three core challenges. The first is the choice of where to direct their R&D efforts. The second is how to coordinate those efforts with their suppliers and customers, as any single component is ultimately but one part of a complex assembled product. Third, they need to manage these efforts internally. Here we focus on the first two problems, highlighting ...

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