This research examines the impact of internationalization on small and medium enterprise (SME) survival, and the direct and moderating effects of technology resources and research and development (R&D) alliances. Our survey examination of 1,612 Korean SMEs reveals that sales internationalization is associated with better survival prospects, suggesting that failure risk does not increase with cross-border sales. In addition, though technology resources provide no direct survival benefits, R&D intensity acts as a moderator in the internationalization-to-survival relationship. R&D alliances, on the other hand, are directly linked with survival but do not show a moderating effect. This supports the liabilities of newness and smallness view that external relationships can help counter survival threats but suggests that the accumulation of technology resources may be more important when firms seek international expansion.
The gap between a firm's reservoir of technical knowledge and the formation of a project to explore the commercial potential of a breakthrough technical insight or discovery is the first major discontinuity in the radical innovation lifecycle. The first step toward bridging that gap occurs when the researcher with the technical insight recognizes that it might have commercial potential and decides to alert a research manager. In our longitudinal study of eight radical innovation projects in six large, multi-national, R&D-intensive firms, the initiation of a radical innovation project was neither frequent nor routine. In fact the participants in the study indicated that the initiation of a project ± in their terminology, the`fuzzy front end of innovation' ± was the most challenging and uncertain part of the lifecycle. In this paper we explore the case data to illuminate the nature of the initiation gap. In addition we present an assessment framework that can help researchers decide whether or not to bring their technical idea to the attention of management. If the decision is positive, the assessment tool can help them prepare for the discussion with management and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the case to submitted for evaluation.
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