Fiat: Open innovation in A downturn (1993-2003)

California Management Review

Volumn 52, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 132-159

  Di Minin, Alberto ^a   Frattini, Federico ^b   Piccaluga, Andrea ^c  

^a POLITECNICO DI MILANO   (Italy)

^b Scuola Superiore sant'Anna in Pisa   (Italy)

^c SIAF in Volterra   (Spain)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953851413     PISSN: 00081256     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/cmr.2010.52.3.132     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. According to the agreement, the U.S. Treasury Department committed itself to immediately contributing $3.3 billion to the plan, with an additional $4.76 billion in future loans to keep Chrysler running for years. Fiat, under the agreement, has acquired a 20% stake in Chrysler (with the option to acquire up to 51% in 2013, after the largest parts of the Treasury debt have been refunded).
2. A recent report from a congressional panel raised doubts on whether all loans made to Chrysler by the Treasury Department will be fully repaid and said it is likely that it will take years for Chrysler to tum into profitability. M. Thiruvengadam, "Auto Makers Unlikely to Repay Loans Fully," Wall Street Journal, September, 10, 2009.
3. S. Marchionne, "Fiat's Extreme Makeover: My job as CEO is not to make business derisions-it's to push managers to be leaders," Harvard Business Review, 86/12 (December 2008): 45-48.
4. 2 emissions in both 2007- with 137.3 g/km- and 2008- with 133.7 g/ km. A. Michaels, "Technology to the Rescue," Financial Times, March 4, 2008;
5. ANFIA, "Studies and Statistics, Italian Market- 2009," October 22, 2009;
6. JATO Dynamics, "JATO Consult C02 Report- 2009," October 22, 2009.
7. H. Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003).
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11. Chesbrough and Garman (2009), Open Innovation: Researching A New Paradigm op. cit., p. 2.
12. The ratio between external and overall CRF revenues in 2001-2004 would be as high as 70% if we consider that a substantial share of the revenues classified as resources from the Fiat Group and subsidiaries (about 30 million per year) in fact came from GM (Fiat's partner at the time) but had to be negotiated by CRF at market conditions with the U.S. automotive player.
13. See Figure 3, which shows that from 1993 to 1994 the annual revenues from external customers and EU projects increased by a factor of three, from 6 million to about w17 million, which almost totally compensated for the declining resources coming from the Fiat Group (see Figure 1).
14. L. Ciferri, "Common-Rail Diesel for Everybody," Automotive News Europe, February 12, 2001, pp. 14. Mr. Michellone resigned to express his disappointment with the Bosch deal (his resignation was not accepted). Before signing with Bosch, Fiat Group's senior executives talked with the controlled automobile, industrial vehicle, and component subsidiaries, and they all recommended selling the Common Rail system on the grounds that either the technology was at a too early stage, or that Fiat did not have (and could not build) the complementary knowledge to apply this technology internally. While CRF and Mr. Michellone strongly opposed this view, the corporate level decided to give the green light to the technology transfer project.
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17. Traditionally, corporate legal departments managed the largest part of the Fiat Group's patenting activity. In 1993, CRF held less than 100 international patent families, whereas in 2003 this number rose to 500. In 2006, CRF was the first company in Italy in terms of patent filings presented at the European Patent Office. During the period 1999-2006, CRF ranked 2nd in Italy for the number of patents (461) filed at the European Patent Office (Telecom Italia SpA ranked 6th with 150 patents and Pirelli Pneumatid SpA 4th with 252 patents). Since 2005, CRF has also been the second largest Italian assignee of U.S. patents, with approximately 40 patents granted per year.
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22. At the end of the 1990s, when the number of external partners and the amount of resources from outside the Fiat Group had significantly grown, CRF outsourced the mapping and raking of new potential clients on a yearly basis to spedalized innovation intermediaries and consulting firms. Although this approach could not substitute personal, trust-based relationships when it came to understanding which technology exploitation opportunities should be pursued, it helped CRF save a great deal of time in the initial broad-range screening of the total universe of new potential partners.
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36. Chesbrough and Garman (2009), La Valorizzazione della Ricerca Scientifica op. cit.
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40. J. Collins, How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In (New York, NY: Harper-Collins, 2009).