Title: Explaining born globals: an organisational learning perspective on the internationalisation process

Authors: Lars Bengtsson

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, PO Box 7080, 220 07 Lund, Sweden

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to suggest a development of the traditional internationalisation model based on the organisational learning theory in order to explain internationalisation processes of so called ||born globals||. In the new internationalisation model that is proposed here, the propensity, speed, intensity and direction of the internationalisation of a firm will be determined both by the context, the internationalisation actions of other firms, and by the firm|s ability to learn from direct personal experience as well as from the prior internationalisation experiences of the founders and other persons and firms. The internationalisation actions by other firms mainly provide the individual firm with objective foreign market knowledge through searching and noticing and vicarious learning. The firm acquires experiential foreign market knowledge through three different learning processes: congenital learning, grafting and experiential learning.

Keywords: born global; internationalisation process; organisational learning; knowledge acquisition; foreign markets; SMEs; international new ventures; small business.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSB.2004.005616

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, 2004 Vol.1 No.1, pp.28 - 41

Published online: 30 Oct 2004 *

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