Motivation: Through the increasing demand in new products, companies within international business context have to implement innovation efforts and so, they are searching for talents in an increasing amount of available employees.

Problem statement: The problem of those firms is to employ the right people (talents) on one side and to ensure the innovative performance of the company on the other side.

Research approach: For solving this issue, a qualitative research was chosen, while conducting a Swedish and a German case study of suitable companies and interviewing them about their practices of attracting, selecting, and integrating talents.

Results: There is support found for the connection between the recruitment of talents and the innovative performance.

Conclusions: The results contribute to talent management and provide lessons from successful cases as a guideline for other companies. For the reason that the case studies do not belong to a specific industry, the results are potentially generalizable.