On June 22, GSOM SPbU Professor and Director of the Center for Russian Multinationals and Global Business Andrei Panibratov spoke at the Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) for students and professors.

The aim of the lecture Sanctions, cooperation and innovations: Implications for multinational firms was to reveal the effects of sanctions at the firm-level, with the special attention to the cooperation and innovation activity of sanctioned firms. Specifically, the differences between domestic and international companies in their abilities to adapt to the sanctions in terms of their cooperation with partners and attitude to innovations are discussed.

The speaker argues that firms operating in the international markets tend to prioritize product innovation and new market entering to overcome the negative consequences of sanctions. Using the example of Russia, firms operating in a sanctioned economy are more likely to improve their offerings to clients and to find new markets to compensate the losses and to fill their unused capacities. The important finding having both managerial and policy-making value is that operation on the international market may not necessarily provide an advantage in terms of new partners on the local market but would rather facilitate the search for new foreign markets. Yet, the government may assist the sanctioned firms differently regardless of its internationalization scope.