Decision-Making in Early Internationalization: A Structured Expert Judgement Approach

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to show how a structured approach to elicit expert judgement (SEJ) can guide the practice of early internationalization. We applied SEJ to forecast some critical issues upon which an innovative start-up wished to base their decision of whether to expand their initial operations in Poland and Czech Republic to Brazil. 16 participants of an Executive MBA program acted as experts and underwent the procedure for eliciting their judgements. The performance of experts was quantified in terms of the statistical accuracy and informativeness, which combined provided the weight for each expert according to Classical Method methodology. The combination of weighted expert judgments led to improved statistical accuracy and informativeness of the forecast.The procedure demonstrates how entrepreneurs can take advantage of expert knowledge in deciding about risky endeavour when lacking their own experiences and reliable data that can guide their choices.