Building international entrepreneurial virtual networks in cyberspace

We examine how software international entrepreneurs in Iceland use online social network sites to develop and harness their network relationships. To study these relationships, we use a combination of participant observation on LinkedIn and open ended face-to-face interviews. The framework for this study is based on resource-based view, networks and international entrepreneurship theories. We found that entrepreneurs with the largest networks use the online social network to demonstrate their network strength and to identify opportunities to bridge relationships. Our contribution illustrates how entrepreneurs acquire resources to internationalize through online social capital formation.     

Linking international entrepreneurship to uncertainty,opportunity discovery,and cognition

In this paper, we suggest a model of international entrepreneurship that links cognition, noticing opportunities, absorbing uncertainty, and bearing uncertainty, to international entrepreneurial action, which is important because of the increased interest in international entrepreneurship. The ways in which cognition affects opportunity identification are discussed to show how international entrepreneurs’ cognitive processes work in terms of identifying opportunities. We also explore the role of cultural differences, with respect to tolerance for bearing uncertainty, on international entrepreneurship. Finally, the model is used to identify areas for future international entrepreneurship research.     

Differences in international opportunity identification between native and immigrant entrepreneurs

The aim of this study is to understand more about how identification of international opportunities differs between native and immigrant entrepreneurs. Based on a survey of 116 immigrant and 864 native Norwegian entrepreneurs with newly registered firms, we show that immigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to identify international opportunities than native entrepreneurs are. We reveal important differences in the identification process between native and immigrant entrepreneurs. Whereas general human capital has a significant positive effect on international opportunity identification for native entrepreneurs, we cannot find the same effect among immigrant entrepreneurs. Moreover, although financial capital positively influences international opportunity identification among native entrepreneurs, the same effect is significantly negative among immigrant entrepreneurs. Based on these findings, we conclude that native and immigrant entrepreneurs do not utilise the same resources to identify international opportunities. This study contributes to the literature on international entrepreneurship by documenting significant differences in how native and immigrant entrepreneurs identify international opportunities. It also contributes to immigrant entrepreneurship literature by bringing the opportunity-based view of entrepreneurship into the field.     

International opportunity recognition as a critical component for leveraging Internet capabilities and international market performance

Recent research in the field of international entrepreneurship has emphasized the need for a better conceptualization of international opportunity recognition. Further, with advancements in information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, there has been a profound impact on the way in which international business is conducted, for example, enabling entrepreneurial firms to capitalize on the economic opportunities of an Internet environment. In this study, we propose a model, highlighting the importance of international opportunity recognition, as a critical component for leveraging Internet capabilities and international market performance. Through the lens of a resource capabilities approach, a quantitative, online survey was used to collect data from Australian, international entrepreneurial firms. Structural equation modelling results indicate that international opportunity recognition plays a central role in explaining how resources and Internet capabilities combine for the firm’s realization of international opportunities, and subsequent international performance. The findings enrich current understanding of how international entrepreneurial firms realize opportunities in Internet-based environments.     

Entrepreneurship and well-being: Past,present, and future

Entrepreneurship research typically emphasizes firm-level outcomes such as growth and performance. However, people pursue entrepreneurship for deeply personal, idiosyncratic reasons. Therefore, as in other self-organized human pursuits, how entrepreneurship relates to fulfillment and well-being is of utmost importance. In this paper, we provide an overview of the well-being concept, related research, and its connection to entrepreneurship. We define entrepreneurial well-being as the experience of satisfaction, positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and psychological functioning in relation to developing, starting, growing, and running an entrepreneurial venture. We explain this definition of entrepreneurial well-being and review significant developments in our field and the broader field of well-being. Highlights of social, technological and institutional trends illustrate key areas for future research that can enhance our understanding of these phenomena. The eight papers in this special issue focus on entrepreneurial well-being each offering a specific perspective on how scholars can theorize and study the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurship related to well-being.     

Broadening the concept of international entrepreneurship: ‘Consumers as International Entrepreneurs’

We integrate theories from international business, entrepreneurship, innovation, marketing and network economics to develop a four-part typology of ‘consumers as international entrepreneurs’. This broadens the concept of international entrepreneurship and complements the firm-level focus customary in research on international new ventures and entrepreneurs within those ventures. We develop our arguments in the context of the new economy and discuss areas for investigation in this emerging area of inquiry.     

Universally-enabling and context-binding resources in new venture internationalization: Evidence from venture capital backed start-ups in an emerging market

Integrating institutional and effectuation theories, we examine the relationship between entrepreneurs’ means and internationalization in an emerging market. Results indicate that some means, such as technical expertise or business network membership, transform into valuable internationalization resources despite difficult institutional conditions. Others, however, such as industry or international experience, are best deployed locally. Findings also indicate that means such as entrepreneurial experience and number of founders act as catalysts of internationalization, allowing for other means to transform into internationalization resources. We extend effectuation theory by showing how different means transform into internationalization resources and contribute to research at the intersection of institutional theory and international entrepreneurship by expanding our understanding of universally-enabling and context-binding internationalization resources. In so doing, we identify a boundary condition to international entrepreneurship theories that emphasize the role of individual resources during venture internationalization by revealing a context in which certain traits exhibit nonstandard relationships with internationalization.     

Strategic Entrepreneurs at Work: The Nature,Discovery, and Exploitation of Entrepreneurial Opportunities

What do entrepreneurial opportunities look like? How do firms discover and exploit these opportunities to create value and sustain competitive advantage? This paper reviews the strategic management and entrepreneurship literatures to identify the nature and character of entrepreneurial opportunities and the entrepreneurial strategies that firms employ to seize and commercialize these opportunities. Three emerging schools are identified. The economic school argues that entrepreneurial opportunities exist as a result of the distribution of information about material resources in society. The cultural cognitive school argues that entrepreneurial opportunities exist as a result of environmental ambiguity and the cultural resources available to interpret and define these opportunities. Finally, the sociopolitical school stresses the role of network and political structures in defining entrepreneurial opportunities. We integrate these perspectives to offer a way to improve understanding of the opportunity creation and exploitation process.     

Is international entrepreneurship a field? A bibliometric analysis of the literature (1989–2015)

The abundant academic literature on international entrepreneurship has attracted the attention of many researchers in various fields (international business, entrepreneurship, management, marketing, to mention a few). A debate has been opened on whether international entrepreneurship is indeed a field. In this article, we seek to contribute to this debate. We applied a bibliometric analysis to 567 articles on international entrepreneurship published during the 1989–February 2015 period. The main indices that this is an emerging field are as follows: a concentration of publications on central contributors and universities, key dates of social events, the creation of a journal dedicated to the topic and a strong identity of keywords. A co-citation analysis shows that the international entrepreneurship field is structured on a stable body of references, organised into five key clusters, distinct from its mother disciplines: international business and entrepreneurship. Our work helps to identify the paradigmatic approaches that structure international entrepreneurship.     

Emerging markets research: Trends, issues and future directions

We survey recent research on emerging markets (EM) within the fields of economics, finance, international business and management. To do this, we reconfigure the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification system to provide a comprehensive list of the topics that have been studied, and we combine it with the main journal ranking methodologies to identify the journals in which significant contributions to EM research have been disseminated. We highlight the areas of greatest interest and those that have received relatively little attention to date. The suggested topics for future research include: Data and methods; market efficiency, risk-adjusted returns and risk premia; exchange rate volatility and firm-level exposures; classification systems, clusters and networks; firm-level internationalisation; international business strategy; attracting and benefiting from FDI; corporate and institutional governance; and behavioural perspectives, culture and the demise of the representative agent.     

Natural resources,multinational enterprises and sustainable development

The natural resources sectors have not been prominent in the recent international business (IB) or management literature. We argue that the natural resources sectors, if not unique, are certainly characterized by a set of features that make them different, and raise issues that are central to international business. We identify two broad areas: the theory of FDI and the MNE, and the link between MNEs and sustainable development. We survey the relevant literature, much of it from outside IB, and identify a rich menu of research opportunities for IB scholars, many of which are addressed in the papers in this Special Issue.     

Expressions of Relationship Networking in International Entrepreneurship

The role of networks is a major factor in the internationalization process for entrepreneurs. In this article, we analyze the influence of social networks in international entrepreneurship. We developed a multiple case study based on a qualitative perspective, selecting four fruit exporters from the Brazil’s semi-arid region and used a qualitative and longitudinal design. These firms are among the largest fruit exporters in Brazil. Content analysis was derived by examining organizational documents, bibliographical material, and semi-structured interviews with 30 managers and consultants. We used ATLAS.ti software to analyze the collected material. The major networks were formed with buyers and competitors, affording benefits such as trust and information; relationships were therefore formed in both vertical and horizontal directions. Consequently, and due to their influence on the internationalization process, social networks are considered a relevant subject in international entrepreneurship. Moreover, the expressions of social networking have interfaces with both the exploration of international opportunities and attitude towards risk, as well as the development of competitive features that are the fundamental dimensions of international entrepreneurship. The results reveal that social networks are fundamental to entrepreneurs’ businesses and are strategic for their development and maintenance. Recognition of such role of these networks in international entrepreneurship is the main contribution of this paper.     

International new ventures: The cross-border nexus of individuals and opportunities

We draw on entrepreneurship research to present a framework for international new ventures as the cross-border nexus of individuals and opportunities. Opportunities may be associated with cross-border combinations of resources and/or markets and therefore vary along these two dimensions. This framework accounts for the emergence of firms whose very existence stems from opportunities to engage in the cross-border combination of resources and/or markets. This perspective has important implications for whether internationalization follows competitive advantage or vice versa and also helps explain how the identification and exploitation of opportunities to create international new ventures may contribute to economic development.     

Advancing societal grand challenge research at the interface of entrepreneurship and international business: A review and research agenda

Societal grand challenges are increasingly attracting the attention of both entrepreneurship and international business scholars. While entrepreneurship focuses on the opportunities that emerge and need for bold and innovative solutions, international business research emphasizes the global reach of the challenges and role of multinational enterprises. Although both conversations are insightful, we argue that examining one without the other gives an incomplete picture on how to address grand challenges. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review of the conversation on grand challenges in the international business and entrepreneurship literature. Upon synthesizing the results, we create an integrated framework and research agenda for viewing grand challenges through an international entrepreneurial lens.     

International opportunity development on crowdfunding platforms: A spatial,temporal, and structural framework

Despite the prevalence and global diffusion of digital platforms, the international entrepreneurship literature has paid limited attention to the latent potential of this type of digital context for the emergence and actualization of international opportunities (IOs). Drawing on the cognitive and digital entrepreneurship literature, we develop a framework that focuses on the spatial, temporal, and structural dimensions of digital crowdfunding platforms. We elucidate how these three contextual dimensions influence the IO development, namely IO recognition, evaluation, and exploitation. We present three testable propositions, an illustrative case, and a future research agenda that provide a foundation for research on IOs in the digital context.     

Network complementaries in the international expansion of emerging market firms

Can domestic political capital be transferable to more or less similar institutional contexts abroad? Motivated by contradictory results in two streams of research, this study seeks to combine the insights from two theoretical arguments and conceptualize the role of domestic political ties in international expansion as a dual problem of securing key resources from home governments and looking for opportunities in foreign markets and matching resources to capture them. We adopt the notion of network complementarity to examine the complementarity effect of domestic political ties and foreign ties on international expansion. The implication is that EMNE research that concentrates on either looking for foreign opportunities or securing domestic resources, but not both, is likely to be incomplete when international expansion is being studied. Using a longitudinal panel dataset of Chinese international new ventures expanding to 105 foreign markets, we find a positive interactive effect of domestic political ties and foreign ties on Chinese MNEs’ internationalization. This positive interactive effect on internationalization is found to be stronger for expanding to developing host markets than to developed host markets. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on domestic political ties, the international expansion literature, the network complementarity literature, and the international entrepreneurship literature.     

Opportunities to Improve Entrepreneurship Education: Contributions Considering Brazilian Challenges

This paper identifies challenges and opportunities for enhancing higher education in entrepreneurship considering student perceptions concerning both their demand for entrepreneurship education and their entrepreneurial intention as well as previous studies that present the points of view of experts. The main focus is Brazilian higher education, but the results address challenges that cross borders, such as the need for a practical approach. The study analyzed the data from the Brazilian version of the 2011 Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey (GUESSS) obtained with an online questionnaire answered by 25,751 Brazilian students from 37 colleges and universities. To give a reference for a better understanding of Brazilian statistics, data were compared to those of the 2011 international GUESSS involving also 25 other countries and 64,079 responses from them. Three hypotheses were tested. The results show that entrepreneurship education has a significant negative effect on student entrepreneurial intention and also on self‐efficacy. The same occurs between entrepreneurial intention and students' demand for entrepreneurship education. Brazilian students present higher levels of entrepreneurial intention and are significantly more motivated to take courses and activities in entrepreneurship than those students in the international sample. Approximately 50 percent of Brazilian students are potential entrepreneurs. One of the opportunities identified is to take advantage of students' positive attitudes and their high demand. The opportunities could play an important role in overcoming the challenges recognized, among which are the need for a more practical approach and the need for larger and diversified educational offerings beyond business planning. The challenges make Neck and Greene's recommendations, presented in a 2011 issue of JSBM, particularly important for Brazil. The last three sections propose different explanations, suggestions for more research, and practical recommendations.     

Predictive and effectual decision-making in high-tech international new ventures – A matter of sequential ambidexterity

This study investigates the international opportunity exploration and exploitation processes of high technology international new ventures (INVs) operating in the global medical devices sector. Drawing upon the effectuation and causation perspectives, we contribute to the micro-foundations of international entrepreneurship research in the early innovation development space by focusing on decision-making logics of techno-entrepreneurs of INVs. Specific focus is afforded to the phases of their exploration and exploitation of international opportunities leading to international new venture creation. In the pre-start-up and start-up stages of international new ventures, we find that sequential ambidexterity applies to how the subject firms manage the exploration and exploitation of opportunities in the delivery of their innovations to global markets.This research advances prior international entrepreneurship studies by focusing on the opportunity and innovation processes on the individual level. We identify different decision-making logics in the different phases and contrary to earlier findings in the international entrepreneurship (IE) area, we found causation logic to dominate the initial stages of exploration and effectuation logic, in the latter stages. Prior commercial experience presented itself as a key determining factor in the decision-making path chosen by international techno-entrepreneurs. Our study further extends the view of organizational ambidexterity by offering empirical insights into the relevance of sequential ambidexterity for understanding the processes of innovation exploration and exploitation in high-tech INVs and the decision-making logics driving these processes.     

The “why” of international entrepreneurship: uncovering entrepreneurs’ personal values

Previous studies investigating the “why” of entrepreneurial internationalization have focused on firm-level motivations, overlooking the relationships between firm-level and individual-level motivations and why entrepreneurs differ in the goals they intend to achieve. We investigate the role of personal values as desirable end states that motivate international entrepreneurship by functioning as superordinate cognitive structures that underlie the practical internationalization goals set by entrepreneurs. By adopting an idiographic approach based on a laddering methodology in a sample of 140 new domestic technology-based firms located in Northern Italy, we uncover and map the hierarchies of goals that motivate entrepreneurs’ internationalization intentions, which are anchored in five personal values: achievement, power, self-direction, benevolence, and security. We discuss our theoretical and methodological contributions and the policy implications of our findings.     

International entrepreneurship: A critical analysis of studies in the past two decades and future directions for research

International entrepreneurship (IE) is an emerging field with a rapidly growing body of knowledge. This paper examines gaps, issues and trends of the IE in the last two decades. First, it suggests an integrative framework based on international business, entrepreneurship, strategic management, social network and marketing theories. The suggested model highlights the significant role played by the entrepreneur/team, firm and network resources that act as antecedents to international opportunity development and value innovation. Second, it suggests four typologies of firms (born global, enduring global, early exporter and mature exporter) that can be studied under the IE theme. Finally, we discuss future research directions.