The role of the entrepreneur in identifying international expansion as a strategic opportunity

Authors:
Valle Santos-ÁLvarez;Teresa GarcíA-Merino
Affiliations:
Universidad de Valladolid, Departamento de Organización de Empresas y C.I.M., Avda. Valle de Esgueva, n 6, 47011 Valladolid, Spain;Universidad de Valladolid, Departamento de Organización de Empresas y C.I.M., Avda. Valle de Esgueva, n 6, 47011 Valladolid, Spain
Venue:
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
Year:
2010

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Abstract

This research explores business internationalisation as a process of recognising and exploiting business opportunities in an international context and uses Spain's natural stone industry as a case study. We differentiate internationalisation into two stages: opportunity identification and subsequent opportunity exploitation. We focus on the initial identification stage to determine the impact of entrepreneurs' cognitive variables when gathering relevant information for internationalisation of the firm, highlighting the role of entrepreneurs' alertness, the centre of interest, causal logic, and prior experience. We also examine the importance of the entrepreneur's environment, social networks, and institutional setting. In our empirical analysis, we find that although interested in internationalisation, entrepreneurs in the natural stone industry devote very little time and effort to gathering information. As a result, decisions related to internationalisation are restricted by uncertainty and a poor understanding of the appeal, barriers, and available support services.