Probably. There is no clear cut evidence, yet. I/We initially thought that this is not the case. There are “crowding out” effects, i.e. multinationals would put domestic innovative entrepreneurs at a competitive disadvantage (and out of the market). But no. In the Netherlands multinationals are apparently more innovative not just in terms of imitations (stuff developed elsewhere and transferred to the Netherlands), but also in terms of “real” innovations, goodies developed right here. But they need the link to the parent company to get the knowledge they need (see attachment Sadowski_Co_RP2006.pdf)… How about Dutch multinationals like Philips and DSM? How do they create their innovations, what kind of links to domestic firms/universities do they have/need? Maybe they increasingly need knowledge developed somewhere else because they cannot source it locally???
Interestin articles on this subject have been written by Maskell. He has written about “Local Buzz, Global Pipelines”. This is stuff about knowledge exchange, networks, domestic and international innovation. Anyway, it´s interesting.