Impact of international entry choices on the nature and type of innovation: Evidence from emerging economy firms from the Indian bio-pharmaceutical industry

•Differences in international expansion related choices result in different types of organizational learning which leads to differences in innovation.•We examine the innovation outcomes in the context of emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs).•We empirically test our hypotheses using firm-level data on 167 firms from the Indian bio- pharmaceutical industry during the time frame of 1997 to 2017.•Our results indicate that greenfield subsidiaries have a positive effect on core technology innovation, while cross-border M&As have a positive influence on non-core technology innovation.•For EMNEs, foreign subsidiaries in high income locations foster product innovations, while those in low income locations foster process innovations.