The Born Globals: A new generation of small European exporters

Over the last decade several studies have focused on what have been called International New Ventures or Born Globals – firms that engage in significant international activity a short time after being established. Building on an empirical study of small firms in Norway and France, it was found that more than half of the exporting firms established since 1990 could be classified as Born Globals. This implies that the Born Global issue is not limited to just a few firms, it includes the majority of newly established exporting firms. Furthermore, in terms of global orientation, export strategy, competitive advantages and market situation – the newly established, highly‐involved exporters possess similar characteristics to the old global firms. Also, newly established low level involvement exporters resemble old low level involvement exporters. Examining the differences between newly established firms with high or low export involvement levels revealed that a decision maker’s global orientation and market conditions (home and export markets) are important factors. Because this study found that a firm is either Born Global or “born as local”, the relevance of internationalization process stage models, as described in previous research, came into question. A key implication is that the decisions made during the establishment process of the firm may be more important to future export development than expected, according to the internationalization process models. In many countries export development programs target the established firms in order to help them succeed in export markets. Alternatively, our findings recommend that export assistance programs place their focus on newly established highly‐involved exporters.