Title: Organisational innovativeness of international new ventures: evidence from Swedish firms

Authors: Jan Abrahamsson; Vladimir Vanyushyn; Håkan Boter

Addresses: Faculty of Business and Technology, Stamford International University, 10400 Bangkok, Thailand ' School of Business and Economics, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden ' School of Business and Economics, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden

Abstract: This paper scrutinises how and for what purpose international new ventures (INVs), of various formation types and at different development stages, innovate organisational structures and routines in comparison to other internationally active firms in Sweden. We show that INVs place more emphasis on reorganising their external relationships and primarily aim their reorganisation efforts at furthering their ability to enhance innovative output. Coupled with the fact that INVs report higher rates of new-to-market innovations than other internationalised firms, we conclude that INVs retain their innovative focus over time and, irrespective of their formation type, continuously advance their networking capabilities. We propose that dynamic innovation-advancing relational capability is a characteristic that is unique to the INVs as a group of firms.

Keywords: international new ventures; innovation; community innovation survey; organisational innovation; internationalisation; dynamic capabilities; Sweden.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2019.100792

European Journal of International Management, 2019 Vol.13 No.4, pp.479 - 495

Received: 09 May 2017
Accepted: 09 Nov 2017
Published online: 18 Jul 2019 *

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