Start-Ups and Internationalisation: The Case of Romania. Part 2. Empirical Research

Abstract

Companies’ creation and growth are a fervently debated topic in the literature and economic policies, at least for the fact that they are related to maintaining a critical number of active companies, an essential aspect of the functioning of the economy and society. Growth is associated with overcoming the stage of survival and ensures the development and consolidation of existing companies, meanwhile the establishment of the new ones means the replacement of those that disappear from the economic landscape. The launch and expansion of young companies could lead to a positive balance in terms of employment, income, incentive of demand to other sectors and regions, boosting their development. New firms are often associated with innovation and technological change, competitiveness and competition on the market. The survival, growth and consolidation of companies occurs not only as a result of quantitative accumulations, but also as a result of the incorporation of new technologies, an open attitude towards innovation, whether it is technical, managerial or commercial. Growth is therefore a normal phenomenon in the life of a company, which must be encouraged and supported by public measures as part of a smart and forward-looking economic policy. Growth may be local, but it usually takes place at national, regional and international levels. In the first part of this article we have presented and discussed the theoretical background as it results of previous researches and official studies and reports, internationalization opportunities and some features and trends of internationalization of companies in the EU, and Romania, respectively. We now present our investigation to determine whether, and to what extent, internationalisation is relevant to start-ups, if there is a possible correlation between the 6 selected indicators of internationalisation as revealed by World Bank Data on one hand, and the number of start-ups in Romania on the other hand.