We investigate how the characteristics and experience of the entrepreneurial founding team (EFT) affect the export orientation and subsequent performance of the businesses they establish, while allowing for the mutually reinforcing relationship between exporting and productivity. Using a sample of UK technology-based firms, we hypothesise and confirm that the set of EFT human capital needed for entering export markets is different from that required for succeeding in export markets. Commercial and managerial experience helps firms become exporters, but once over the exporting hurdle it is education, both general and specific, that has a substantially positive effect. The overall pattern of human capital effects on productivity is similar to those for export propensity. We also find evidence that productive firms are more likely both to enter export markets and to be export intensive, and that exporting boosts subsequent firm productivity.

We examine the relationship between R&D, product innovation, and exporting for a sample of new technology based firms (NTBFs) in the UK. Allowance is made for selection bias and for endogeneity between innovation and exporting. Product innovators are more likely to export, but conditional on entering export markets successful innovation does not increases subsequent export intensity. Lagged productivity is strongly associated with exporting, supporting the view that efficient firms are better able to overcome the barriers to entering export markets. We also find strong evidence of the importance of internal R&D and of supply-chain collaborations in fostering innovation, and that formal commercial collaborations can be important in overcoming the (information) sunk costs of entering export markets. The use of ecommerce does nothing to boost entry into export markets, but the intensity of its use is associated with increased export intensity.

Theory points to the existence of a 'learning by exporting effect', in which exposure to export markets enhances performance through exposure to the knowledge stocks of trading partners. We investigate the learning by exporting hypothesis by examining the effect of exporting on the subsequent innovation performance of UK high-tech SMEs. We find evidence of learning by exporting, but the pattern of this effect is relatively complex. Exporting helps high-tech SMEs innovate subsequently, but does not make them more innovation intensive. There is also evidence that it is consistent exposure to export markets that helps firms overcome the innovation hurdle, but that there is a positive scale effect of exposure to export markets which allows innovative firms to sell more of their new-to-market products on entering export markets. Service sector firms are able to reap the benefits of exposure to export markets at an earlier (entry) stage of the internationalization process than are manufacturing firms. Firms producing a rapidly changing portfolio of innovative products exhibit higher 'churn' in terms of entry to and exit from export markets than low-intensity innovators, and this is reflected in the effects of entry and exit into and out of such markets.

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Although prior research underscores the benefits of external collaboration for a firm's innovative output, little research has examined the role that collaboration plays across the different stages of the innovation process. Drawing from organizational learning theory, this article examines (1) how collaboration with domestic partners assists in the formation of collaborations with foreign partners, (2) how knowledge from these collaborations is associated with product innovation at different levels of novelty, and (3) how the relationship between the level of innovation novelty and firm growth is influenced by whether the focal firm engages in open or closed innovation and the origin of the collaborator (foreign or domestic). Three key findings emerge from the econometric analysis of a sample of 1684 Taiwanese firms. First, domestic collaborations assist in the formation of foreign collaborations when the partner type is the same. Second, the level of innovation novelty is associated with the type and geographic location of partners. This study differentiates among noninnovating firms, incremental innovators, and radical innovators and demonstrates that the role of partners changes as the number of countries in which a firm collaborates with each partner type increases. Third, only radical innovation is relevant to firm growth, regardless of whether it is developed internally or through collaboration with domestic or foreign partners. Practitioner PointsManagers will find it easier to form foreign collaborations with types of partners that a firm has engaged in collaboration with domestically.