During the last decade a new type of firm called Born Global (BG), International New Venture (INV) or Global Start-up (GS) has attracted the attention of international business researchers (Knight & Cavusgil 1996; Madsen & Servais 1997; Autio, Sapienza, & Almeida, 2000; Knight & Cavusgil, 2005). Located in large as well as small countries, these start-ups adopt early global business strategies, deriving significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries (Oviatt & McDougall, 1993). Offering a new perspective, the field of International Entrepreneurship (IE) has questioned the centrality of a BG start-up as the unit of analysis, and has posed the entrepreneur at the core of studies about INV’s development and growth (Zahra, 2005; Andersson & Evangelista, 2006). Thus, regardless of its age and paucity of tangible resources, a firm can be an active international business participant (Knight & Cavusgil, 2004, p. 137) because of the experience accrued by its entrepreneur. In particular, “strategic orientation,” defined as a peculiar combination of entrepreneurship, market and learning orientation (Zahra, 2005; Gao, Zhou & Yim, 2007), has been considered the key explicative factor of the INV’s accelerated foreign growth and performance (McDougall & Oviatt, 2000; Rialp, Rialp & Knight, 2005), and even a prerequisite for its existence (Jantunen, Nummela, Puumalainen & Saarenketo, 2008). However, few studies have examined the differences in strategic orientations of BGs and tried to relate directly different strategic orientations to the entrepreneur profile, although the development of an INV has been traditionally considered strongly influenced by their entrepreneurs (Kuivalainen, Sundqvist & Servais, 2007). This paper focuses on the role of entrepreneurial experience and its impact on the BG’s strategic orientation. In particular, we follow a qualitative methodology comparing eight high-tech BG start-ups, four of which were founded by serial entrepreneurs and four by novice entrepreneurs. We illustrate the differences in strategic orientation of our sample with the aim to analyze whether or not they depend on the previous experience of the entrepreneur.

A Strategic Orientation Approach to Born Global Start-ups: A Comparison Among Novice and Habitual Entrepreneurs

ODORICI, VINCENZA;PRESUTTI, MANUELA
2010

Abstract

During the last decade a new type of firm called Born Global (BG), International New Venture (INV) or Global Start-up (GS) has attracted the attention of international business researchers (Knight & Cavusgil 1996; Madsen & Servais 1997; Autio, Sapienza, & Almeida, 2000; Knight & Cavusgil, 2005). Located in large as well as small countries, these start-ups adopt early global business strategies, deriving significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries (Oviatt & McDougall, 1993). Offering a new perspective, the field of International Entrepreneurship (IE) has questioned the centrality of a BG start-up as the unit of analysis, and has posed the entrepreneur at the core of studies about INV’s development and growth (Zahra, 2005; Andersson & Evangelista, 2006). Thus, regardless of its age and paucity of tangible resources, a firm can be an active international business participant (Knight & Cavusgil, 2004, p. 137) because of the experience accrued by its entrepreneur. In particular, “strategic orientation,” defined as a peculiar combination of entrepreneurship, market and learning orientation (Zahra, 2005; Gao, Zhou & Yim, 2007), has been considered the key explicative factor of the INV’s accelerated foreign growth and performance (McDougall & Oviatt, 2000; Rialp, Rialp & Knight, 2005), and even a prerequisite for its existence (Jantunen, Nummela, Puumalainen & Saarenketo, 2008). However, few studies have examined the differences in strategic orientations of BGs and tried to relate directly different strategic orientations to the entrepreneur profile, although the development of an INV has been traditionally considered strongly influenced by their entrepreneurs (Kuivalainen, Sundqvist & Servais, 2007). This paper focuses on the role of entrepreneurial experience and its impact on the BG’s strategic orientation. In particular, we follow a qualitative methodology comparing eight high-tech BG start-ups, four of which were founded by serial entrepreneurs and four by novice entrepreneurs. We illustrate the differences in strategic orientation of our sample with the aim to analyze whether or not they depend on the previous experience of the entrepreneur.
2010
Stategic management society 30th Annual International Conference
1
31
Odorici V.; Presutti M.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/100277
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