IE Articles 2019

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research – Volume 25, Issue 6, pp. 1340-1367

The early development of International New Ventures: a multidimensional exploration

Paul Kirwan, Tiago Ratinho, Peter van der Sijde, Aard J. Groen

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the early development stages of International New Ventures (INVs). Specifically, the authors explore how INVs acquire and leverage four kinds of capital – strategic, managerial, financial and social – to recognise a foreign opportunity, begin the pre-foreign entry activities, and finally start the INV. Drawing on four case studies of high-tech INVs, this study tracks their development in three stages: foreign opportunity, pre-foreign operation and post-foreign operation. Results indicate INVs build advantages and internationalisation activities occur before formal operations begin. INVs deliberately orchestrate certain kinds of capital contingent to the specific internationalisation stage. Further, the authors find that not all types of capital are equally important throughout the internationalisation process: INVs identify foreign opportunities when endowed with managerial and social capital; INVs source a majority of their managerial and financial capitals externally before internationalising; and INVs only contribute all four capitals simultaneously after internationalising

Industrial Marketing Management – Volume 82, pp. 253-264

The impact of SME internationalization on innovation: The mediating role of market and entrepreneurial orientation

Ebru Genc, Mumin Dayan, Omer Faruk Genc

In today’s highly competitive global environment, even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to make product and process innovations in order to outperform the competition and satisfy global customers. Investigating the success factors of innovation performance has become critical for the survival and competitiveness of SMEs. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of the degree of internationalization (DoI) on innovation performance through the mediating factors of market and entrepreneurial orientation in the context of emerging-market SMEs. We tested our model and hypotheses with 235 SMEs in the United Arab Emirates, which is an emerging market. The results obtained from partial least squares estimates indicate that the degree of internationalization positively affects innovation performance and, more importantly, that this relationship is indirect and fully mediated by market and entrepreneurial orientation for SMEs. These results shed light on the mechanism of the effect of DoI on innovation performance in the emerging-market SME context.

International Small Business Journal – Volume 37, Issue 8,  pp. 804–830

How do SMEs use support services during their internationalisation process: A comparative study of French traditional SMEs and INVs in Asia

Nathalie Belhoste, Rachel Bocquet, Véronique Favre-Bonté, Frédéric Bally

This article integrates research on the internationalisation processes of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and export assistance services to investigate how such firms use support services drawing upon a large, qualitative study of 32 French traditional SMEs and international new ventures (INVs) that have entered Asia. Our key contribution is to consider the time to internationalisation (gradual or rapid) and the stage of internationalisation (entrance or intensification) rather than export intensity alone, and to examine how support services can help SMEs internationalise. The identification of different configurations of uses leads to the development of theoretical propositions that extend existing models pertaining to support services and firm internationalisation. These findings have several important managerial implications for support services to target their offer more precisely to two types of SMEs; they also provide useful guidance for SMEs to determine which tailor-made offerings from private and public actors are most applicable to their internationalisation efforts.