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India is the only place in the world where you can find huge amounts of engineering graduate recruits. Companies from all over the world are flocking there not only for offshoring menial engineering work, but also for innovation and R&D centers working on important projects "end-to-end". This is not only because labor is available and relatively cheap, but also because this is the way to come up with the products needed by developing countries... which are the only ones where sales growth is likely to occur over the next years

Radical innovation happens in services too. Companies like Mastercard and Visa are now facing strong competition from Internet-based players like PayPal and have to start developing new products. It is interesting that MasterCard has gone beyond the usual approach of acquiring smaller firms and has set up an R&D unit. This may help develop absorbtive capacity and avoid running into integration problems.

Daimler and BYD (China) plan to establish a development center to combine the German automaker's expertise in automotive engineering with BYD's battery and low-cost production know-how. The companies aim to create a new brand for the vehicle that will be positioned between BYD and Mercedes models. Development time may take about three years. Daimler said last month it will focus on cleaner technologies to take global market share from rivals BMW and Audi.