A model of rapid knowledge development: The smaller born-global firm

Abstract

Existing models of the internationalization process have not captured the important phenomenon of accelerated international growth of born-global firms, which led Johanson and Vahlne (2003) to revise their model. However, the revised network model falls short of explaining rapid internationalization of firms. While they indicate a "specific relationship development process" used by born-global managers, Johanson and Vahlne (2003) still suggest the existence of an incremental learning and "responsive" model, which is based on pre-existing relationships. We extend current theory in arguing that born-global managers can use both pre-existing and newly-formed relationships, to quickly and proactively develop new knowledge for rapid commercialisation of their products. Proactive, advanced relationshipbuilding capability is based around locating partners with technological knowledge with a view to ensuring ease of sharing knowledge. We explore the development of trust and interfirm partnerships in established and newly-formed networks and how these lead to tacit knowledge, absorptive capacity and new knowledge generation. While Johanson and Vahlne's (2003) emphasise "market specific experience and operation experience" we emphasise "technological experience". The reason that knowledge sharing is able to proceed quickly is that the shared "technological knowledge" allows rapid transfer and development of new knowledge and the drive to commercialise a product before a competitor, promotes the "mutual need" (co-dependency) to act quickly, characteristic of technology-based industries, which face rapid change. As an outcome of the born-global manager's ability to locate new partners through existing networks, new international links may be quickly developed, with internationalization being an outcome, but not necessarily a driver of behaviour in smaller born-global supply chains.

Knowledge acquisition for the internationalization of the smaller firm: Content and sources

“…Research on the role of knowledge acquisition in the internationalization of firms often fails to clearly distinguish the types of knowledge involved, and pays little attention to where it comes from, other than direct experience or from networks (Autio et al, 2000;Autio, 2005 andAutio et al, 2010;Eriksson et al, 1997;Freeman et al, 2010). We propose a concrete research framework that links types of knowledge and its sources for the first time.…”

Contextualization of Evolving Patterns in the Internationalization of Small Firms

“…Thus, relationship knowledge and trust are very important to overcome such outsidership. In the extant literature, empiric studies show the importance of networks which facilitate the international expansion of SMEs (Mort and Weerawardena, 2006;Freeman et al, 2010;Schweizer, 2013). This study provides evidence showing that a considerable influence on important decisions in the internationalization of small firms is not only from their directly connected business networks, but also from their loosely connected institutional networks.…”

“…One of commonly referred to drawback was the deterministic nature of the incremental model (Moen and Servais, 2002;Freeman et al, 2010;Sandulli et al, 2012). In addition, it was more relevant to large, early internationalized manufacturing companies.…”

“…Empirical studies also show that product innovation and technological knowledge increase the likelihood of firms' decisions on export (Cassiman and Golovko, 2011;Freeman et al, 2010). Thus, the technical core, which consists of organizational tasks and technology (Scott, 2002;Peng et al, 2008), is considered to be a main input from the organizational level.…”

How Do Companies Achieve Their Marketing Goals With Social Networks?

“…Aversion to the use of social network sites is higher for small and medium enterprises which cannot coordinate themselves with the speed of the web (Freeman, 2010) and, frequently, have not economic and human resources to manage SNSs internally. At the same time, with the increase of the relevance of these instruments and strategies, some SMEs have known the power of these tools and, for this reason, have chosen on the one hand a direct management of social networks (expensive activity that give results in medium-long period) and, on the other hand, the investment in online advertisings using SNSs, this last tool contributes principally to the strengthening of brand value.…”