International new ventures and early internationalization: Networks and skills as enhancing agents

Abstract

The skills of the employees, and for the International Experience of employees, in line with the chosen Theoretical Model. current research on international new ventures has been trying to understand the processes that support companies in their decision to early enter foreign markets. The role of learning and knowledge as become one of the arising topics in the literature. Recent empirical evidences provide important insights on the internationalization of new business. Younger firms are able to compensate their limited experiential learning at company level, through learning based on previous experiences of the management team, and through inter-organizational relationships (vicarious learning). The most common type of vicarious learning discussed in conceptual and empirical works involves learning with a network: depending on the position of a company in the network, this will define its range of opportunities and constraints and these relationships have a strong impact on market selection as well as on entry mode because they make it easier to identify and exploit new opportunities. Based on the opinions of different entrepreneurs, this study seeks to determine the importance of several factors as inducers of the internationalization process by companies that have internationalized early in their life cycle. Factors such as the relational networks, entrepreneurs’ specific skills and international experience of employees are considered. The empirical study was conducted on a sample of 320 Portuguese companies. Data Exploratory Analysis methodologies and Univariate Statistical Inference methodologies were used. Evidence was found for the importance of Relational Networks, for Specific.