IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/manint/v54y2014i4d10.1007_s11575-014-0214-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Born Global or Born to Run? The Long-Term Growth of Born Global Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Birgit Hagen

    (University of Pavia)

  • Antonella Zucchella

    (University of Pavia)

Abstract

Born global firms have stimulated substantial academic attention as regards their start up but research has neglected their subsequent, ongoing internationalisation. This contribution extends analysis from the inception and childhood to the growth and maturity of such firms. We investigate whether born global are also “born to run” companies; we also try to reconcile the analysis of international new ventures in international entrepreneurship studies with the approaches based on fast growing firms and gazelles. We initially present the latest advances in the modelling of accelerated internationalisation over time; we then discuss and develop a conceptual framework and a model that captures the variables that affect born global firms’ evolution in an holistic perspective; finally, we match case study analysis with the framework and discuss our findings. The results show two groups of firms that differ significantly in long-term internationalisation paths and growth cycles. We highlight turning points in these paths and discuss the drivers which lead to sustained high growth. The characteristics of the entrepreneurial/management teams, strategic partnerships and the entry in complex markets are the main differentiators in growth patterns, irrespectively of the industry. The “openness” of the founders and the early preparation for growth determine both the extent of organizational learning and the speed at which it is developed and used. We see said learning and its speed in development and use as the underlying, necessary mechanism of sustained high growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Birgit Hagen & Antonella Zucchella, 2014. "Born Global or Born to Run? The Long-Term Growth of Born Global Firms," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 497-525, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:manint:v:54:y:2014:i:4:d:10.1007_s11575-014-0214-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11575-014-0214-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11575-014-0214-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11575-014-0214-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sui, Sui & Yu, Zhihao & Baum, Matthias, 2012. "Prevalence and Longitudinal Trends of Early Internationalisation Patterns among Canadian SMEs," MPRA Paper 41177, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. John A Mathews & Ivo Zander, 2007. "The international entrepreneurial dynamics of accelerated internationalisation," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 38(3), pages 387-403, May.
    3. Jan Johanson & Jan-Erik Vahlne, 2009. "The Uppsala internationalization process model revisited: From liability of foreignness to liability of outsidership," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 40(9), pages 1411-1431, December.
    4. Benjamin M. Oviatt & Patricia P. McDougall, 2005. "Defining International Entrepreneurship and Modeling the Speed of Internationalization," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(5), pages 537-553, September.
    5. Antonella Zucchella & Per Servais, 2012. "The internationalisation process of small- and medium-sized firms and the liability of complexity," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 15(2), pages 191-212.
    6. Efrat, Kalanit & Shoham, Aviv, 2012. "Born global firms: The differences between their short- and long-term performance drivers," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 675-685.
    7. Jan Johanson & Jan-Erik Vahlne, 1977. "The Internationalization Process of the Firm—A Model of Knowledge Development and Increasing Foreign Market Commitments," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 8(1), pages 23-32, March.
    8. Patricia Phillips McDougall & Jeffrey G. Covin & Richard B. Robinson & Lanny Herron, 1994. "The effects of industry growth and strategic breadth on new venture performance and strategy content," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(7), pages 537-554, September.
    9. Magnus Henrekson & Dan Johansson, 2010. "Gazelles as job creators: a survey and interpretation of the evidence," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 227-244, September.
    10. Michael Lubatkin & John Florin & William S. Schulze, 2003. "A social capital model of high growth ventures," Post-Print hal-02311715, HAL.
    11. Elizabeth Garnsey & Erik Stam & Paul Heffernan, 2006. "New Firm Growth: Exploring Processes and Paths," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 1-20.
    12. Loane, S. & Bell, J.D. & McNaughton, R., 2007. "A cross-national study on the impact of management teams on the rapid internationalization of small firms," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 489-504, December.
    13. Madsen, Tage Koed & Servais, Per, 1997. "The internationalization of Born Globals: An evolutionary process?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(6), pages 561-583, December.
    14. Colombo, Massimo G. & Grilli, Luca, 2005. "Founders' human capital and the growth of new technology-based firms: A competence-based view," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 795-816, August.
    15. Niina Nummela & Kaisu Puumalainen & Sami Saarenketo, 2005. "International Growth Orientation of Knowledge-Intensive SMES," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 5-18, January.
    16. Marian V Jones & Nicole E Coviello, 2005. "Internationalisation: conceptualising an entrepreneurial process of behaviour in time," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 36(3), pages 284-303, May.
    17. Weerawardena, Jay & Mort, Gillian Sullivan & Liesch, Peter W. & Knight, Gary, 2007. "Conceptualizing accelerated internationalization in the born global firm: A dynamic capabilities perspective," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 294-306, September.
    18. Michael Lubatkin & John Florin & William S. Schulze, 2003. "A social capital model of high growth ventures," Post-Print hal-02276699, HAL.
    19. Nicole E Coviello, 2006. "The network dynamics of international new ventures," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 37(5), pages 713-731, September.
    20. Jantunen, Ari & Nummela, Niina & Puumalainen, Kaisu & Saarenketo, Sami, 2008. "Strategic orientations of born globals--Do they really matter?," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 158-170, March.
    21. Westhead, Paul & Wright, Mike & Ucbasaran, Deniz, 2001. "The internationalization of new and small firms: A resource-based view," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 333-358, July.
    22. Henry R. Feeser & Gary E. Willard, 1990. "Founding strategy and performance: A comparison of high and low growth high tech firms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 87-98, February.
    23. Park, Sangmoon & Bae, Zong-Tae, 2004. "New venture strategies in a developing country: Identifying a typology and examining growth patterns through case studies," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 81-105, January.
    24. Gabrielsson, Mika & Kirpalani, V.H. Manek & Dimitratos, Pavlos & Solberg, Carl Arthur & Zucchella, Antonella, 2008. "Born globals: Propositions to help advance the theory," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 385-401, August.
    25. Zoltán J. Ács & Pamela Mueller, 2015. "Employment effects of business dynamics: Mice, Gazelles and Elephants," Chapters, in: Global Entrepreneurship, Institutions and Incentives, chapter 16, pages 304-319, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    26. Danny Miller, 1983. "The Correlates of Entrepreneurship in Three Types of Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(7), pages 770-791, July.
    27. Rialp, Alex & Rialp, Josep & Knight, Gary A., 2005. "The phenomenon of early internationalizing firms: what do we know after a decade (1993-2003) of scientific inquiry?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 147-166, April.
    28. Zucchella, Antonella & Palamara, G. & Denicolai, S., 2007. "The drivers of the early internationalization of the firm," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 268-280, September.
    29. Hagen, Birgit & Zucchella, Antonella & Cerchiello, Paola & De Giovanni, Nicolò, 2012. "International strategy and performance—Clustering strategic types of SMEs," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 369-382.
    30. Hashai, Niron & Almor, Tamar, 2004. "Gradually internationalizing 'born global' firms: an oxymoron?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 465-483, August.
    31. Crick, Dave & Spence, Martine, 2005. "The internationalisation of 'high performing' UK high-tech SMEs: a study of planned and unplanned strategies," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 167-185, April.
    32. A. Rebecca Reuber & Eileen Fischer, 2002. "Foreign Sales and Small Firm Growth: The Moderating Role of the Management Team," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 27(1), pages 29-45, January.
    33. Peter W Liesch & Gary A Knight, 1999. "Information Internalization and Hurdle Rates in Small and Medium Enterprise Internationalization," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 30(2), pages 383-394, June.
    34. Simon Parker & David Storey & Arjen Witteloostuijn, 2010. "What happens to gazelles? The importance of dynamic management strategy," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 203-226, September.
    35. Benjamin M Oviatt & Patricia P McDougall, 2005. "The internationalization of entrepreneurship," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 36(1), pages 2-8, January.
    36. Ram Mudambi & Shaker A Zahra, 2007. "The survival of international new ventures," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 38(2), pages 333-352, March.
    37. Gabrielsson, Mika & Manek Kirpalani, V. H., 2004. "Born globals: how to reach new business space rapidly," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 555-571, October.
    38. Barringer, Bruce R. & Jones, Foard F. & Neubaum, Donald O., 2005. "A quantitative content analysis of the characteristics of rapid-growth firms and their founders," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 663-687, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dzikowski, Piotr, 2018. "A bibliometric analysis of born global firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 281-294.
    2. Francisco García-Lillo & Enrique Claver-Cortés & Bartolomé Marco-Lajara & Mercedes Úbeda-García, 2017. "Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research on ‘Born Global’ Firms and INVs: A Citation/Co-citation Analysis," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 631-652, August.
    3. Jones, Marian V. & Coviello, Nicole & Tang, Yee Kwan, 2011. "International Entrepreneurship research (1989–2009): A domain ontology and thematic analysis," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 632-659.
    4. Sleuwaegen, Leo & Onkelinx, Jonas, 2014. "International commitment, post-entry growth and survival of international new ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 106-120.
    5. Rubina Romanello & Maria Chiarvesio, 2019. "Early internationalizing firms: 2004–2018," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 172-219, June.
    6. Knight, Gary A. & Liesch, Peter W., 2016. "Internationalization: From incremental to born global," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 93-102.
    7. Francisco García-Lillo & Enrique Claver-Cortés & Mercedes Úbeda-García & Bartolomé Marco-Lajara, 2024. "Exploring the intellectual structure of research on ‘born globals’ and INVs: A literature review using bibliometric methods," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 1-29, March.
    8. Angélique Breuillot & Rachel Bocquet & Véronique Favre-Bonté, 2022. "Navigating the internationalization process: Strategic resources for early internationalizing firms," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 282-315, June.
    9. Jiang, Guohua & Kotabe, Masaaki & Zhang, Feng & Hao, Andy W. & Paul, Justin & Wang, Cheng Lu, 2020. "The determinants and performance of early internationalizing firms: A literature review and research agenda," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(4).
    10. Farhad Uddin Ahmed & Louis Brennan, 2021. "A review of methodological diversity within the domain of international entrepreneurship," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 256-299, June.
    11. Gerschewski, Stephan & Rose, Elizabeth L. & Lindsay, Valerie J., 2015. "Understanding the drivers of international performance for born global firms: An integrated perspective," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 558-575.
    12. Farhad Uddin Ahmed & Louis Brennan, 2019. "The impact of Founder’s human capital on firms’ extent of early internationalisation: Evidence from a least-developed country," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 615-659, September.
    13. Baum, Matthias & Schwens, Christian & Kabst, Ruediger, 2015. "A latent class analysis of small firms’ internationalization patterns," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 754-768.
    14. Johanson, Martin & Martín Martín, Oscar, 2015. "The incremental expansion of Born Internationals: A comparison of new and old Born Internationals," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 476-496.
    15. Paweł Capik & Andreas Brockerhoff, 2017. "The Role of Strategic Partnerships in the Internationalisation of Small Born Global Firms," Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, Centre for Strategic and International Entrepreneurship at the Cracow University of Economics., vol. 5(3), pages 49-77.
    16. Cannone, Giusy & Ughetto, Elisa, 2014. "Born globals: A cross-country survey on high-tech start-ups," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 272-283.
    17. Mika Gabrielsson & Peter Gabrielsson & Pavlos Dimitratos, 2014. "International Entrepreneurial Culture and Growth of International New Ventures," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 445-471, August.
    18. Indujeeva Peiris & Michèle Akoorie & Paresha Sinha, 2012. "International entrepreneurship: A critical analysis of studies in the past two decades and future directions for research," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 279-324, December.
    19. Elisa Ughetto, 2016. "Growth of born globals: the role of the entrepreneur’s personal factors and venture capital," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 839-857, September.
    20. Ciravegna, Luciano & Kuivalainen, Olli & Kundu, Sumit K. & Lopez, Luis E., 2018. "The antecedents of early internationalization: A configurational perspective," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1200-1212.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:manint:v:54:y:2014:i:4:d:10.1007_s11575-014-0214-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.