Question: What are your key areas of research?
Alex Rialp-Criado: Since I started my PhD research project, my main areas of research
expertise are International Business/Marketing and increasingly their interaction with
Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management. Therefore, the scientific discipline in
which I feel mostly interested in is International Entrepreneuship (IE). My first studies in
this area date back to the beginning of this XXIst century and I’ve been witnessing the
nurture and development of IE as a distinctive scientific discipline during the last 30
years or so. More specifically, I’ve been always very interested in better understanding
how, why, and with what implications an increasing number of new ventures and SMEs
around the world internationalize early and fast in their lifecycles as opposed to
traditional slow and gradual internationalizers.
Question: What are you currently working on?
Alex Rialp-Criado: I’m currently leading a competitive research project at the national level about how formal and informal environmental institutions and dynamic organizational capabilities affect the way in which international new ventures and SMEs are transforming and adapting to this new global context that is increasingly digital, social and sustainable. Thus, it is intended to examine in depth several issues that determine the impact of digitalization and sustainability on international entrepreneurship and its results at two levels: 1) at the macro level: comparative domestic and international entrepreneurship from a social and institutional approach; and 2) at the micro level: internationalization of new ventures and SMEs from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. Several inputs for this research project come partly from a literature review article, co-authorized with Emmanuel Kusi Appiah and Peter Gabrielsson, just published in the Journal of Business Research, which conducts a systematic literature review about the role of digitalization in early internationalization research. A first output of this project has been an empirical article also recently published in International Business Review.
Question: What are a few of your hobbies or interests?
Alex Rialp-Criado: I enjoy reading, being in nature, and travel. Last summer I could visit Jasper, Alberta in West Canada just one week before an uncontrolled fire heavily struck there. My two children, Berta (20) and Daniel (15) play volleyball and my weekends are busy watching (and taxing them to) their games with my wife Sandra.