Introduction
The field-defining event for international entrepreneurship was the publication of a 1994 paper by Oviatt and McDougall in Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994; this volume). At that time, extant international business theory was focused on multinational enterprises. A widespread assumption was that companies become more internationalized as they became older, more established, and more knowledgeable (e.g. Anderson, 1993; Johanson & Vahlne, 1977). Oviatt and McDougall (1994) n oticed that some firms were entering foreign markets soon after start-up, and set out to explain how they were able to do so. Their explanation is based on the premise that entrepreneurs can overcome the resource constraints of new firms. Autio (2005; this volume) p rovides a valuable comparison of their assumptions and logic with those of the process theory of internationalization that preceded them. Both papers are included in this volume to encourage people to read them to understand the theoretical underpinnings of the field.
Oviatt and McDougallās explanation of early internationalization recognizes a number of factors that reduce the resources and capabilities required for internationalization, thereby reducing the barriers for new firms to enter foreign markets. Specifically, they argue that partnerships based on relationships through social networks, and a concomitant ability to control unowned assets, can compensate for gaps in resources and capabilities. Further, private knowledgeāof markets, foreign contacts, and technologies ācan enable founders of young firms to set up governance mechanisms supporting sustained competitiveness in foreign markets without the advantages of scale. While the initial emphasis was on new firms, these ideas have been extended to take into account the resource constraints of small firms.
Over time, the scope of entrepreneurial internationalization as a research domain has shifted. A highly visible marker of this shift is Oviatt and McDougallās recasting of international entrepreneurship from firms that internationalize early in their life (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994) to āthe discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunitiesā across national borders (Oviatt & McDougall, 2005: 7). This opportunity-based perspective is reflected in recent JIBS commentaries of the domain (Reuber, Dimitratos, & Kuivalainen, 2017; Reuber, Knight, Liesch, & Zhou, 2018) and in the 2018 JIBS special issue on international entrepreneurship. The international entrepreneurship research that is discussed in this chapter and the papers included in this volume encompass both traditions.
There have been two interrelated challenges in assembling a specialized collection of JIBS articles on international entrepreneurship. The first challenge has been to delineate a domain that has inherently blurry and porous borders, despite attempts to define it. While this fuzziness makes international entrepreneurship a stimulating and dynamic area of study, it also makes it difficult to contain. The second challenge has been to select only eight JIBS articles to include in this volume. I chose them on the basis of three criteria. First and foremost, I chose articles which challenge conventional wisdom in international entrepreneurship thinking in some important way. Second, except for the two classic conceptual papers already mentioned, I chose empirical papers. I prioritized empirical papers because it can be difficult to access data on very new and very small firms, and on opportunities, and these papers highlight how scholars have overcome these difficulties. Finally, I wanted a broad mix of papers to reflect the diversity of research that can be considered international entrepreneurship scholarship, and the diversity of empirical methods that have been used.
Although the published volume can contain only eight previously published papers, this introductory chapter can showcase the wide-ranging array of international entrepreneurship research published in JIBS. My objective is to highlight conversations in the journal by describing the coverage of papers from the JIBS backlist. Limiting the discussion to JIBS articles does not seem constraining given the recent reviews and commentaries of international entrepreneurship, both broad and narrow, that cover research from multiple journals (see, e.g. Casillas & Acedo, 2013; De Clercq, Sapienza, Yavuz, & Zhou, 2012; Fernhaber & Prashantham, 2015; Jones, Coviello, & Tang, 2011; Keupp & Gassmann, 2009; Kiss, Danis, & Cavusgil, 2012; Knight & Liesch, 2016; Mainela, Puhakka, & Servais, 2014; Reuber et al., 2017; Reuber & Fischer, 2011; Reuber, Knight, Liesch, & Zhou, 2018; Szyliowicz & Galvin, 2010).
The discussion in this introductory chapter is both backward looking and forward looking. Most of the discussion highlights past literature, organized around four major themes of research that have emerged from the 1990s: (a) factors enabling internationalization under resource constraints, (b) network relationships and entrepreneurial internationalization, (c) entrepreneurial processes and practices underlying internationalization, and (d) how entrepreneurship varies internationally. It should be noted that just as there are no hard and fast boundaries around international entrepreneurship research, there are no hard and fast boundaries around these four themes, and there is some spillover among them. Indeed, papers on themes (c) and (d) are grouped together in Part IV of this book because the papers are about practices. At the end of this introductory chapter, I outline some ideas for future research, highlighting perspectives that might underlie new types of research questions about international entrepreneurship.
Factors Enabling Internationalization Under Resource Constraints
One clearly dominant theme can be identified among the international entrepreneurship papers published in JIBS: the attempt to understand the factors enabling and even encouraging internationalization under the resource constraints of newness and smallness. As outlined in this section, three interrelated streams of research can be identified, focusing on human capital, capabilities, and environments.
Human Capital
Autio (2005) p oints out that the focus on factors enabling internationalization under resource constraints represents a break from prior explanations in that it āturns the spotlight on the role of the entrepreneurā (2005: 13). This break resulted in more attention being paid to the human capital of the founding entrepreneur, or the founding management team, as an explanation of internationalization outcomes. Much of this research has focused on the role of peopleās experience. For example, Reuber and Fischer (1997) s how that internationally experienced teams are more likely to have foreign partnerships and to internationalize more quickly after start-up than teams with less experience, and both of these behaviours are related to a greater degree of firm-level internationalization. Ganotakis and Love (2012) a rgue that the human capital needed for entering exports markets is different than the human capital needed to succeed in them. Specifically, they show that while the experience of the founding team is related to a firmās propensity to export, the educational attainment of the team is related to the export intensity achieved by the firm. Clark, Li, and Shepherd (2018) e xamine the role of country familiarity in managersā cognitions related to foreign market selection.
Other scholars have extend...