Internationalization models: an empirical analysis of the new paradigms for innovative high tech new ventures

Entrepreneurship is a phenomenon of tremendous social importance. In recent years, policy makers across several and diverse countries have realized and recognized the transversal importance of entrepreneurship as engine for the economic growth or recovery. Today, the increased openness of economies, the emergence of global players, the firms’ need for new sources of competitiveness and the technological advances in telecommunications, information and transportation have driven entrepreneurial new ventures to increasingly exploit different geographical areas as a strategic asset in their decision making process regarding the organization of resources; all the mentioned technology-enabling factors indeed allow entrepreneurs to consider, select and compete for resources (i.e. human, finance, technology, infrastructure etc.) on a global scale and since the early stages of their enterprise life. This posits new challenges for policy makers which cannot limit their efforts to facilitate the establishment of new domestic ventures; they are indeed themselves competing on a global arena to attract the best entrepreneurs and the most potential high growth new ventures from around the world. The thesis has a twofold goal. First it aims at investigating why an entrepreneur chooses to approach internationalization since the inception of his/her enterprise, namely what drives the emergence of the so called born globals, through an integration of explanations situated at different levels of analysis such as the entrepreneur, the firm, the home country etc.; results show that the presence of a small domestic market, the scalability of the business and a niche approach have a positive effect on the the early internationalization. In addition, the network relationships built by the entrepreneur, his/her entrepreneurial orientation, international commitment and experiential knowledge seem to be key drivers for early internationalization. The second goal is to explore where the early internationalization process takes place, constituting an empirical attempt to explain the relationship between internationalization patterns of start-ups and the attractiveness of host countries. Results empirically demonstrate how internationalization flows of high-tech start-ups are motivated by the sourcing of host-country locational advantages, identified by the strength of the legal and regulatory framework, the availability of venture capital financing, the innovation potential and the strength of IPR protection.