International entrepreneurship: The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities across national borders

Abstract

In this editorial for the Special Issue on International Entrepreneurship, we interrelate key concepts about the pursuit of opportunities from the entrepreneurship and international business literatures. In doing so, we consider the assessment of opportunities as an individual-level cognitive activity, the construction of opportunity as a firm-level innovative activity and the shaping of opportunity as an institutional-level structuring activity. We then extend the discussion to explore the notion of a distributed, global ecosystem of opportunities and opportunity seekers, which we believe may provide a platform for valuable future research.

Well-trodden highways and roads less traveled: Entrepreneurial-oriented behavior and identity construction in international entrepreneurship narratives

“…Consequently, instead of border-crossing behavior at founding being seen in terms of key individuals per se, there is increasing perception of founders as holistic bundles of identity, knowledge, and networks (Sarasvathy et al 2014). In addition, studies on international entrepreneurs and their role in the behavioral processes of their firms have emphasized the life history of the founder (McGaughey 2007), the construction of identity (Coviello 2015), and related cognitive processes (Acedo and Jones 2007;Jones and Casulli 2014;Reuber et al 2018). These are seen as relevant to IE behavior at both individual and firm levels.…”

“…In conjunction with the lack of studies exploring the nature of IE entrepreneurs (Jones et al 2011), one may well be curious as to the cognitive processes engaged in by international entrepreneurs (Jones and Casulli 2014;Reuber et al 2018). Furthermore, in the constructivist stream of research, entrepreneurship is approached more as a Bbecoming^process (van Burg and Romme 2014; Steyaert and Katz 2004;Steyaert 1997).…”

Social influences in cross-border entrepreneurial migration policy

“…The quality of the institutional environment, knowledge spillovers, and access to market and resources shape their initial country assessment (Efendic, 2016). In addition, the international experience and high geographic mobility of this group of migrants, and often also a global market for their business ideas, allow them to operate within global ecosystems of opportunity seekers (Reuber, Knight, Liesch, & Zhou, 2018), where governments are substantially challenged to attract and retain the best entrepreneurial talent from abroad. In order to be internationally competitive, the policy measures are focused primarily on provision of a seamless entrepreneurial migration experience associated with removal of legislative (I2), financial (I5), and informational (I5) barriers to entrepreneurial migration (Efendic, 2016).…”

“…Moreover, it should be noted that attitudes towards entrepreneurial behavior and perceived behavioral control become highly contextualized and relative measures in the contemporary global ecosystems for entrepreneurship (Reuber et al, 2018). Given that individuals who are internationally mobile can compare different environments for entrepreneurship, this impacts their attitudes to entrepreneurship as well as the degree to which they think they would be able to perform entrepreneurial behavior at a particular location.…”

Digital Interactions and Internationalisation of Small, Medium Enterprises

“…The SMEs differ from MNEs from the point of view of their specific liability of smallness such as limited resources, lack of foreign market knowledge and being sensitive to external challenges [47]. Internationalisation consists of dealing with the challenges and barriers that decelerate the process of internationalisation as SMEs are characterised as having limited resources as well as a lack of capabilities and capacities [40], [47]. Developing internationalisation strategies is relevant for SMEs to prepare, plan and organise their resources to overcome the challenges, to be able to compete and to sustain themselves in the global market [19], [41], [47].…”