Empirical International Entrepreneurship

The availability of inexpensive means of communication and affordable transportation are significant drivers for immigrants to engage in transnational entrepreneurship. Transnational Entrepreneurs (TEs) are individuals that migrate from one country to another, concurrently maintaining business-related linkages with their former country of origin (COO), and currently adopted country of residence (COR) and using such dual embeddedness in their COO and COR to advance their entrepreneurial firms. Based on the dynamic capability perspective and the relational theory of social networks, this chapter offers a theoretical framework explaining how TEs develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market. This theoretical framework suggests an explanation of the process TEs may use to recognise opportunities and benefit from the social networks of their COO and COR. It also explains how TEs’ ethnic and nonethnic ties improve firm performance through the mediating effects of TEs’ dynamic capabilities and the moderating effect of institutional distance between the COO and the COR.

Since the early 2000s, about 100 cities are ranked annually as global cities. This chapter explores a frontier research issue dealing with the functional role of global cities in the internationalisation of firms—and of SMEs in particular. First, an interdisciplinary conceptual research framework is proposed with inputs from international business management on the one hand, and from economic geography, urban sociology, and international development economics on the other hand. Secondly, the chapter reviews how recent studies of global cities use mixed quantitative/qualitative research methods. Such methods measure the concentration of international business activities in major urban hubs worldwide and their global interconnectivity supporting international finance, innovation, technology, and trade. They enable to quantify the size of manufacturing and service activities, run mainly by multinational firms established in global cities, and to qualify the variety of highly specialised functions of global cities facilitating international business developments at regional and intercontinental levels. Thirdly, the authors explore existing knowledge on incremental SME internationalisation theories. The supportive role of advanced producer services (APS) concentrated in global cities is considered. An empirical research scheme is presented in order to explain how relevant SME data can be collected and analysed. It can produce tangible results to demonstrate that global cities act as specialised entrepreneurial ecosystems to promote not only multinational corporations but also the internationalisation of SMEs and globally born start-ups with the help of various forms of APS. Illustrations can be derived from the service functions of global cities in developed countries and in emerging economies as well.

Building from the definitional foundations of entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurship, this chapter critiques three aspects of IE research methods: ontological problems with the “opportunity” concept; a focus at the individual and firm level of analysis that excludes contextual drivers and a perspective of entrepreneurship within systems; and international entrepreneurship’s fundamental hindsight bias. To resolve these problems, the chapter proposes replacing the opportunities concept with the Beliefs-Actions-Results framework for understanding entrepreneurial investments. It introduces the service-dominant logic perspective of how value is co-created within ecosystems as a process model to overcome the levels of analysis problem. Hindsight bias can be reduced through careful research design so that the phenomena of interest are not examined in isolation and to ensure that alternate explanations can be explored.

Platform business models and their underlying technologies are having a transformational impact on the global business landscape. This Schumpeterian disruption is the direct result of international entrepreneurship spanning 40 years from the battle for the industry standard for personal computers in the 1980s to the present day. The chapter analyses the role of entrepreneurs in laying the technological foundations for the growth of the platform business model before undertaking a literature review of business model innovation and the resource-based view (RBV) of technological disruption. This highlights how platform-driven ecosystems have inverted traditional ways of doing business which incumbent firms struggle to emulate. Due to the global nature of the Internet as a technology platform, the chapter will also consider the importance of the born global firm and why traditional one-sided businesses struggle to match the agility and scope of the new age entrepreneurial platform start-ups. This is evidenced by the surge in platform adoption in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Although international entrepreneurship reviews have made a significant contribution to the subject’s knowledge, researchers have not unleashed its full potential. This review provides an understanding of the deeper development processes and structures in international entrepreneurship, focusing on international entrepreneurship’s role in broader opportunity research. We begin by elaborating on a topic modelling approach to look at latent structures of scientific discussion. We then review the contents, influence, and impact of international entrepreneurship in opportunity research. Finally, we present issues that future research could take into account both theoretically and methodologically.

This paper develops a theoretical approach to entrepreneurial decision-making process optimisation, leveraging online and offline opportunities by building a conceptual framework. The literature review covers existing research streams on entrepreneurial decision-making and entrepreneurial opportunity and integrating them with international entrepreneurship. This study offers a conceptual framework for entrepreneurial decision-making process optimisation focusing on new market entry and growth decisions in order to select and seize a more advantageous set of online and offline opportunities and develop associated set of propositions. In doing so, this study explains opportunity discovering and evaluation processes and examines criteria for the evaluation of entrepreneurial decision-making process, two types of entrepreneurial decisions, and optimisation. This study provides theoretical and practical implications and offers detailed directions for the future research agenda.

This chapter aims to analyse the literature on the relationship between international entrepreneurship and technology. Additionally, this essay seeks to provide a critical discussion of the technology elements that entrepreneurs should consider facing new global markets. The analysis was performed using the Structured Literature Review (SLR) as a reliable, rigorous, and international validated method of investigation. Additionally, researchers used as tools for analysis the Dedoose software, the Bibliometrix R package, and the VOSviewer software to mine bibliometric and coding information. The main results find out four main research streams as academic spin-off as a means of technology transfer, the growth of technology and the need for social sustainability, the role of high technology in international enterprises, and technology and the competitive role for international entrepreneurs. Additionally, coding analysis reveals that much of the research in this topic is based on strategies of influence of technology as external components to the international entrepreneurship field. To the best of our knowledge, this chapter can guide academics and practitioners in the identification of the main elements of this research stream and addressing future research challenges.

An analysis of the 100 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs highlights that more than 80% are Chinese, 15% are Malays, and less than 5% are Indians in contrast to the population ratio (Bumiputera 69%, Chinese 23%, and Indian 7%). The above breakdown is repeated every year despite the amount and variety of supporting mechanisms and policies for Malay entrepreneurs, including funding, physical infrastructure, and business advisory services. This study seeks to analyse the impact of diaspora on Chinese entrepreneurs’ dominance in Malaysia through the lens of historical institutionalism approach. The study indicates that diaspora’s social networks and cultural training are the most important factors explaining entrepreneurial success. Government initiatives and support it appears has limited influence on international entrepreneurial development and success and sometimes could be counterproductive.

How and why start-ups become international is still a relevant question in the current literature. This chapter intends to answer both questions by incorporating the notions of institutional entrepreneurship. The study uses a comparative case study of two start-up firms based in Mexico, which recently became international. The analysis of both cases revealed the importance of the role of the firms’ owners. Moreover, it became clear that both owners created and transformed organisational institutions that allowed the firms to become international. The study takes into consideration a multilevel perspective, which analyses both cases at the micro, meso, and macro institutional levels. This chapter intends to contribute to the entrepreneurial and institutional entrepreneurship bodies of literature.

Over the past three decades, the domain of international entrepreneurship (IE) has matured and developed into a field of study. However, there are still areas where both thematically and especially methodologically the field would benefit from more pluralistic approaches. Especially comparative IE studies have been suggested in review studies to provide substantial promise for added contribution to the field, and novel methodological choices based on content analysis and secondary data have been called for in IE research. This study aims to respond to those omissions in the IE domain, by conducting a comparative study of Finnish and Russian international entrepreneurship through a discourse analysis supported by primary data in the form of interviews of Finnish and Russian entrepreneurs. The COVID-19 pandemic arriving globally in the first half of 2020 provides a timely topic in which to conduct such a study. As a result, we analyse the discourse in Finnish and Russian media about entrepreneurship before (2019) and during (2020) the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in each country. We find both similarities and differences in the tone and level of the discussion, and surprisingly the interviewed entrepreneurs are rather critical of the media discussion related to entrepreneurship in the time of the pandemic in their respective countries. We consider the theoretical and methodological implications arising from these results and suggest that the IE field would benefit from the added methodological richness that content analysis and discursive research methods can provide.

This chapter examines the barriers to entrepreneurial internationalisation for creative and cultural industries from Ukrainian companies. It outlines the concepts of ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative industries’, which have rapidly gained importance in Ukraine. Their attractiveness is explained in part by their low capital requirements compared to traditional sectors. This creates low barriers to entry into the market and encourages start-ups. The sector’s national importance is such that Ukraine’s government investment agency profiles it as offering specific opportunities to build on the country’s expertise and desire for economic growth. In this chapter, the operationalisation of the creative economy in Ukraine is examined including the ‘direction of travel’ of its creative industries, which can be characterised around three related spatial themes: (1) regeneration initiatives, (2) IT hubs and (3) creative clusters. These themes provide the context for an exploration of the internationalisation processes for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ukraine. The internationalisation efforts and the strategies of small and micro-firms are analysed (Bayfield, Dana, and Stewart, 2009). The study of local creative SMEs illustrates the opportunities and challenges of internationalisation in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Western Ukraine. With the help of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, six case studies were conducted on local entrepreneurs that run internationally oriented businesses. Four of them are featured in this chapter. Despite the language challenges, it was found that there was a strong pull to internationalisation from not only bigger and wealthier markets but also from green and ethical consumers. Nevertheless, the case studies highlight the scope to develop the Ukrainian entrepreneurial ecosystem further to facilitate internationalisation.

This study explores the relationship between the earliness of internationalisation (EOI) and international growth using a sample of 168 high-tech (computer, electronics, telecommunications, and other digital services) Italian SMEs surveyed at two points in time (2007 and 2018). We investigate the moderating role of firm age and size on the relationship between EOI and international growth, conceptualised in terms of both, international scale and geographic scope. More specifically, we evaluate the impact of firm entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) on this moderating role. We find that size and age reinforce internationalisation growth, but its effect is stronger when firms have low EO and high MO. Thus, ageing more than sizing seems able to sclerotise early international ventures, thus reducing their ability to enlarge their international scale and scope. Our results highlight the complexity of the relationship between EOI and post-entry international development.

The export entry of small firms has been recognised as an entrepreneurial activity in the entrepreneurship literature. Thus, developing a holistic understanding of what it means for small firms to internationalise entrepreneurially across different contexts is essential. However, the literature on capabilities in international entrepreneurship has tended to remain either conceptual or qualitative, and scholars have called for studies on capabilities of emerging market firms specifically. This chapter responds to these methodological and contextual gaps in the literature by conducting a quantitative study on the capabilities of early internationalising firms from Bangladesh. We examine how international entrepreneurial capability and international entrepreneurial orientation impact internationalisation of early internationalising firms in a developing country low-tech industry context. With an empirical sample of 647 firms from Bangladesh, we find (1) positive relationship between the international entrepreneurial capability of entrepreneurs and international EO of the firm; (2) positive relationship between the international entrepreneurial capability of entrepreneurs and both financial and non-financial performance; (3) positive relationship with international entrepreneurial orientation with both types of performance; and (4) partial mediation effect by international entrepreneurial orientation in the international entrepreneurial capability—performance relationship. Consequently, this study posits that entrepreneurial internationalisation involves the adoption and application of both entrepreneurial capability and orientation simultaneously. In this way, the study adds to the scientific knowledge on what it means to internationalise entrepreneurially and emphasises the important role that quantitative research methods have in IE in general, as well as for developing markets and low-tech industries in particular.

This chapter analyses female international entrepreneurship in emerging economies and articulates its correlation in consideration of the growing influence of emerging markets in the global economy. One of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set out in the UN Sustainable Development Plan 2030 is gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls (United Nations, 2018). Female entrepreneurs play an essential role in the growth process of a country, yet female entrepreneurs are underrepresented across the globe, as they face various obstacles during the founding process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of institutions and institutional factors in shaping women’s international entrepreneurship in emerging economies. For this purpose, research data related to 12 emerging economies were extracted from international reports that provided economic indicators and entrepreneurship of countries based on survey data and were analysed using structural equation modelling with SmartPLS3. Women’s entrepreneurship research is a growing trend in international entrepreneurship and is methodologically diverse. Our review also shows that research on women’s international entrepreneurship has a limited presence in top journals. In this study, we intend to evaluate the relationship between institutional factors and international women entrepreneurship in emerging economies.

International entrepreneurship, which means the development of the local market to the foreign market, is a key driver for the growth of the firm and gaining a sustainable competitive advantage. A review of the literature shows that few studies have addressed the dynamic capabilities of international entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of international networking capability on the firm’s international performance by considering the mediating role of dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities (foreign market knowledge capability, adaptive capability, and international entrepreneurial opportunity recognition capability). The population of this research is Iranian software development companies including members of the Iranian Informatics Association, the Association of Iranian Mobile Application Developers, and the Association of Iranian Software Developers and Exporters. A total of 200 firms were selected as the final sample of this study. This research is a cross-sectional survey in which the data collected are analysed using the SEM-PLS approach. The results of this study indicate that although international networking capability has a positive effect on foreign market knowledge capability, adaptive capability, and international entrepreneurial opportunity recognition capability, its direct impact on the firm’s international performance is not confirmed. Besides, based on the results, foreign market knowledge capability, adaptive capability, and international entrepreneurial opportunity recognition capability have a positive and favourable effect on a firm’s international performance. The implications of this research will help firm managers to identify and develop the capabilities needed for international entrepreneurship.

Nowadays, “internationalisation” is a topic of concern for many types of research on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs pursue internationalization policy as a leading process to keep and improve their position in the competitive business markets. However, SMEs face many challenges that hinder the successful implementation of the internationalization process. This chapter aims to recognise the important barriers to internationalisation for Iranian SMEs. We conduct two studies using a combined exploratory and confirmatory approach. We apply the Delphi method for exploring and forecasting the key barriers in the first study. In the second study, we validate the key indicator employing a Structural Equation Modelling technique for the Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the survey data. In the Delphi method, a group of 24 managers and academic professors in Iran, identified the main barriers. A sample of 210 survey observations was collected from the owner and top managers, senior managers, and employees. The results suggest 8 key factors and 31 indicators of barriers to internationalisation associated with Iranian SMEs: informational, financial, marketing, functional, procedural, governmental, environmental and, tariff and non-tariff. This research contributes to the knowledge of critical obstacles concern for current and future business internationalisation, and the outcomes provide practical implications.

In recent decades, many start-ups have emerged and grown in the business atmosphere; they changed some principles and altered the business pillars approximately. These start-ups rely on several important points such as initial investment, founders’ technical and managerial skills, innovation ecosystem, market research for a new type of services and products, accessibility to consumers and users, resources, IT infrastructures, etc. in which their importance may differ compared with traditional businesses. For this purpose, they need to plan, estimate, and organise their resources accurately. One of the growing start-up fields is medical tourism that provides the health service, medical treatment, and surgeries in the destination country which has various advantages such as access to prominent surgeons, physicians, and experts; low-cost services; access to natural medical areas; etc. and makes it possible to tourist to generate a new cash flow for destination countries. Therefore, the founders should decide on effective factors in this business, such as locating, staffing, marketing, etc., that affect the business future significantly. On this account, this paper concentrates on location as an important element that needs a great initial investment and depends on multiple conflict criteria. For this purpose, the criteria and sub-criteria are identified and weighted using the BWM method by pairwise comparison, and then five zones of the country are examined as location alternatives. The result of four MCDM methods determined the south of the country as the most appropriate part with almost suitable facilities and lower cost than the centre of the country.

Selecting inappropriate partners and forming a non-homogeneous team is one of the root causes of entrepreneur failure. Therefore, it seems important and essential to equip the idea owners and entrepreneurs to choose their team members and colleagues using a formal framework. An implicit property of this problem is its multi-criteria nature. Certainly, choosing team members just based on their technical abilities can be misleading. Therefore, an acceptable team member selection methodology should envisage the attitudes and behavioural, social, and other characteristics of candidates to be selected as a team member. These features are usually evaluated hesitantly, and decision-makers must be equipped with uncertainty handling frameworks. In this chapter, the problem of team member selection, considering its multi-criteria and uncertain nature, is investigated. After reviewing previous literature and identifying the criteria used to select team members, a multi-criteria approach based on interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) aggregation operators is proposed. The flexibility of the IVIF in handling hesitancy along with using different aggregation operators strengthens the suitability of the proposed method to aid entrepreneurs in selecting their team members. To illustrate the usability and effectiveness of the proposed framework, a real-word case of selecting three members is analysed.

Entrepreneurship is key in the growth of an economy. The rate of entrepreneurship has varied differently in recent years, in part, due to different factors: economic, social, cultural, etc. The international entrepreneurship, concretely, the differences between entrepreneurship in the different OECD countries have been widely analysed as well as the characteristics of entrepreneurship in certain areas. This study proposes an original international approach, mainly based on using a machine learning algorithm to predict the rate of international entrepreneurship according to a series of input variables: economic (gross domestic product, household savings rate, research and development spending, cost of starting a business, net household income, and unemployment rate), tax (income taxes, taxes on income, taxes corresponding to social security), and education (percentage of the population with tertiary education). The data sources used were the OECD database, the World Bank database and the GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) database. The results of this study determine a model that could serve, internationally, to the authorities responsible for creating national and international policies to identify how entrepreneurship will vary depending on the decisions taken in different fields, such as in economic matters, fiscal matters, international and foreign policies or educational matters.

Since the dawn of humanity, supplying food has been one of the most significant, crucial needs of human beings. Meat and poultry, as an essential part of any healthy diet, have an undeniable role and a significant share in the food supply. Due to the vast and variety of different activities in the food supply, supply chain networks have paramount and salient effects on the environment since the notion of the green food supply chain has been placed the focal point of attention. However, in today’s competitive world, companies need to pay attention to entrepreneurial approaches and new international markets as much as environmental issues to be agile, profitable and alive. Consequently, the design and optimisation of the green food supply chain especially in perishable food to minimise environmental impact, minimise total cost and maximise the chance of entry to new international markets are essential requirements for all food companies. To satisfy the needs of consumers (e.g. in Iran and neighbouring countries), particularly in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, innovation is a key factor in new products. In this chapter, a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model formulated to optimise three objective functions simultaneously including minimising the total fixed and transportation costs, minimising the total CO₂ emission released from the transportation network, and maximising the total utilisation of capacities in suppliers, manufacturers and retailers. The solution approach which was employed in this study was augmented ε–constraint, and this mathematical model, as well as the approach, was applied to a real-world company in Tehran (Koorosh Protein Company) as a case study. The results and their consistency with the actual data depicted the capability and potency of the model. The finding of this chapter can enrich the insight and understanding of the decision-makers and managers as to green entrepreneurial optimal food supply chains and allow them to choose optimal approach in a trade-off between three conflicting objective functions.

Start-ups require a coherent strategy of resource allocation to grow and survive as they encounter environmental uncertainties and resource limitations when they enter foreign markets. Hence, to attain sustainable growth, entrepreneurs can adopt the “growth engines” strategy defined by the lean start-up method. To cope with the complexity of growth decisions in start-ups, and to analyse engines’ feedback loops, system dynamics (SD) simulation methodology has been used through causal relationships between the main variables and the developing stock-flow diagram. In addition to the lean approach, a real-world case study was also applied for model simulation, and an optimum policy was provided for each proposed scenario. Five different scenarios and five practical policies, each related to a specific growth engine, were simulated. Simulation results were discussed to facilitate decision on which engine must be prioritised in particular environmental conditions, and when making a pivot decision is necessary. Ideally, comparing simulation results under different scenarios to the base run revealed a substantial increase in the customer lifetime value resulting from focusing on the sticky engine with no increased customer attraction. Finally, this study highlighted the importance of selecting only one main strategy from customer acquisition and customer retention at a time and tried to attain the optimal value of customers over the long term. Moreover, research findings may be also useful for start-up executives seeking business growth by adopting correct decisions on how to obtain optimal results under conditions of extreme uncertainty.