Encyclopedia of International Strategic Management

A metanational company identifies, locates, accesses, and melds (i.e., melts and welds) elements of knowledge - technological, market and societal - from multiple locations around the world to feed its innovation processes. The term “metanational” was coined in 2001 by Doz, Santos, and Williamson, borrowing the prefix “meta” from the Greek to denote the “beyond, but not above” nations character of a metanational firm. It might be more accurate, though, to write about metanational innovations rather than metanational firms, as the definition does not prejudge how the supply chain, the manufacturing operations, and the downstream activities, such as service and marketing and sales, are deployed and configured geographically. A firm that draws upon dispersed and differentiated sources of knowledge for its innovation process can also be metanational without being multinational (for instance, by relying on multiple partners, worldwide, to contribute dispersed and differentiated knowledge).