Survival and Growth of Born Global Firms

This study deals with long-term survival and growth of small international firms. Early models of firm internationalization depict the internationalization as a slow incremental learning process where the firms first develop a solid platform on the domestic market before gradually moving to international markets. However, recent years there has been reported evidence of a different kind of firms that internationalize right after inception, labeled Born Global firms. The study compares firms from the two categories of firms in terms of survival and growth. The results indicate that there are no differences between incrementally internationalizing firms and Born Global firms in terms of these key performance measures. Further a resource-based model of growth in Born Global firms is tested. The results indicate that growth of Born Global firms is highly dependent of the firms� international entrepreneurial orientation, or their ability to actively seek and exploit new market opportunities on international markets.