Search results

This paper aims to study whether international niche market leaders (INMLs) gained their leading position as early mover or diligent follower, and assess whether they leveraged hard or soft forms of technological, supply pre-emption and customer lock-in advantage mechanisms.

Empirical material stems from qualitative and quantitative data on a sample of 20 niche companies from the Basque Country (Spain) that operate in business to business markets.

The sample predominantly followed an early entrant strategy and applied soft measures to reach niche market leadership.

Findings imply that early entering fosters conquering leadership in niche markets, that pioneer advantage is easier to sustain in niches than in mainstream markets, and that soft measures are more effective in niche markets than in larger markets. A limitation to our findings is that they follow from explorative research on a sample of firms from a reduced geographic setting.

Hidden champions and INMLs can be important sources of technological progress and economic value for the localities that host them. Therefore, despite their traditional low profile and the fact that they are not always the largest firms around, policymakers may want to pay more attention to this type of companies.

Tot he best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to research entry timing and its outcome for market leadership with regard to niche players or hidden champions-type of firms. It introduces an original taxonomy to operationalize and distinguish between hard and soft measures to leverage advantage mechanisms related to market entry timing.

In Paris, in 2015, 195 countries agreed to limit the emission of CO₂. The German Energiewende is an example of the types of regulatory changes that countries will need to enact to meet their Paris commitments. The Energiewende saw the German Government forcefully shift the energy base from non-renewable to renewable sources to reduce CO₂ emissions, and the effect of this was to reduce the market value of some German energy firms by as much as 70%. This paper aims to consider the strategic options available to energy incumbents facing the sort of regulatory challenges implied by the Paris agreement.

This paper is a literature review and a thought experiment, in which, 12 fields of strategy research are reviewed, and using the insights obtained from these fields, four strategic options are proposed for the energy incumbents, namely, “fight,” “flight,” “fit” and “follow.” Each strategy is introduced and evaluated, and, by looking at examples from other industries, the viability of that strategy for the energy industry is concluded.

Of the four strategies identified – that is, fight (lobbying), flight (internationalization or diversification), follow (imitation) or fit (adopt a core competencies perspective that re-imagines the firm) – it was concluded that only the last is feasible. The present review, and the application of the discussion to the energy industry, suggests that “fight” is viable only in the short term as a delaying strategy; “flight” is a value-destroying strategy, and, therefore not a real option for the energy industry; “follow” will lead the energy incumbents to lose their current positions of power; and only “fit” will allow the energy incumbents to remain viable in the long term.

All research has its limitations. The main limitation of this research is the fact that this study is a thought experiment based on a literature review. The suggested strategies are forward-looking, but are based on historical examples, and are intended to guide the energy incumbents, even when they are based on non-energy examples. The reader should view this paper in that light.

The practical implication of this research is that, of the 12 fields of strategy that it reviews, there is only one feasible strategy for the energy incumbents looking to survive the sorts of regulatory challenges implied by the Energiewende and the Paris agreement. The research suggests that many/most/all of the energy incumbents will, at first, choose a “fight” strategy, but in the long term only those that choose for a “fit” strategy will survive the sort of disruptions implied by these regulatory changes.

The social implications of this research are that many/most/all firms in the affected industry will go through a predictable process, of first resisting the change, before eventually supporting it; that “flight” is not a viable strategy; and that radical innovation rarely comes from incumbents. Policymakers should be aware of these facts when not only working with incumbents to develop the regulations necessary to meet the Paris climate commitments but also looking at the impacts of regulation and when trying to “pick winners.”

The paper reviews the existing literature, and the review is not new. The application to a specific industry and the advice gleaned from this for managers and policymakers is new and of high value.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the drivers of lean approaches and successful management of wearable technology start-ups. The paper is a descriptive study that employed a case study methodology based on semi-structured interviews with ten start-ups’ managers in Wearable Technology 2017 conference. Participants were selected based on convenience sampling and the pre-set criteria. The current study contributes to this field through the main findings, which suggest that four stages need to be considered by starts-up for a successful market readiness, including the time of entry and overcoming market entry barriers, product attributes, product development process, and commercialization. Finally, findings were categorized in the form of an iterative learning loop model and also, practical strategies and methods were recommended for successfully going through each stage.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research on the views of Presidents and Vice Chancellors of Open Universities of current threats and opportunities for their institutions as the author marks the 50th anniversary of the first Open University in the UK established in 1969. The paper offers a historical account of the development of the Open University model, and assesses the extent to which it remains in the key position as owner of innovation in the higher education sector.

Interviews were conducted with leaders of Open Universities or distance teaching universities. They covered a total of 14 universities.

The replies from institutional leaders reveal the current developments, opportunities and strategic challenges of the universities. It is suggested that the digital revolution along with a wider range of environmental changes for higher education have substantially eroded the first-mover advantage that Open Universities had undoubtedly enjoyed in the first 25 years.

The paper concludes that there are significant concerns that innovation in Open Universities is not sufficiently embedded to ensure that their contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals will be maximised, or even in some cases their survival, and that a key but undervalued element is leadership development for innovation and change.

Although previous research has examined the role of franchising for the economic development of countries, no empirical study to date has investigated the importance of franchising for social, infrastructural, and institutional development. The authors address this research gap by applying research results from the field of sustainable entrepreneurship and highlight that franchising has a positive impact on economic, social, institutional and infrastructural development.

This study uses a fixed-effects model on a panel dataset for 2006–2015 from 49 countries to test the hypothesis that franchising positively influences various dimensions of country development such as economic social institutional and infrastructural development.

The findings highlight that franchising has a positive impact on the economic, social, infrastructural, and institutional development of a country. Specifically, the results show that the earlier and the more franchising systems enter a country, the stronger the positive impact of franchising on the country's economic, social, institutional, and infrastructural development.

This study has several limitations that provide directions for further research. First, the empirical investigation is limited by the characteristics of the data, which are composed of information from 49 countries (covering a period of 10 years). Because franchising is not recognized as a form of entrepreneurial governance in many emerging and developing countries, the available information is mainly provided by the franchise associations in the various countries. Hence, there is a need to collect additional data in each country and to include additional countries. Second, although the authors included developed and developing countries in the analysis, the authors could not differentiate between developed and developing countries when testing the hypotheses, because the database was not sufficiently complete. Third, future studies should analyze the causality issue between franchising and development more closely. The role of franchising in development may be changing depending on different unobserved country factors, economic sector characteristics, or development stages.

What are the practical implications of this study for the role of franchising in the development of emerging and developing economies? Because public policy in emerging and developing countries suffers from a lack of financial resources to improve the social, infrastructural and institutional environment, entrepreneurs, such as franchisors who expand into these countries, play an important role for these countries' development. In addition to their entrepreneurial role of exploring and exploiting profit opportunities, they are social, institutional, and political entrepreneurs who may positively influence country development (Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011; Shepard and Patzelt, 2011). Specifically, the findings highlight that countries with an older franchise sector (more years of franchise experience) may realize first-mover advantages and hence larger positive spillover effects on their economic, social, institutional and infrastructural development than countries with a younger franchise sector. Hence, governments of emerging and developing countries have the opportunity and responsibility to reduce potential market entry barriers and provide additional incentives for franchise systems in order to trigger these positive spillover effects. The authors expect that the spillover effects from the franchise sector on the economic, institutional, social and infrastructural development of a country are stronger in emerging and developing countries than in developed countries.

Previous research has focused on the impact of franchising on the economic development of a country, such as its growth of gross domestic product (GDP), employment, business skills, innovation and technology transfer. This study extends the existing literature by going beyond the impact of franchising on economic development: the results show that franchising as an entrepreneurial activity offers opportunities for economic, social, institutional, and infrastructural development, all of which are particularly important for emerging and developing economies. The findings of this study contribute to the international franchise and development economics literature by offering a better understanding of the impact of franchising on country development.

This paper aims to elucidate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, reverse innovation and international performance of emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs).

The authors analyze archival data of Chinese limited companies between 2010 and 2016, including 11,230 firm-year observations about 1708 firms. In order to test the study’s mediation hypotheses, the authors apply an ordinary least square (OLS) regression.

The authors find evidence that the entrepreneurial orientation of EMNEs has a positive effect on reverse innovations. Furthermore, the authors find positive effects of reverse innovation on the international performance of EMNEs. This pattern of results suggests that the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and international performance is partially mediated by reverse innovation.

The study’s findings help managers in EMNEs to promote reverse innovation by building and using their entrepreneurial orientation. It also helps them to set out and gauge the chances of success of their internationalization strategies. The findings also hold relevance for firms in developed economies as well, as they may understand which emerging economy competitors stand to threaten their positions.

The strategic role of reverse innovations – i.e. clean slate, super value and technologically advanced products originating from emerging markets – has generated considerable research attention. It is clear that reverse innovations impact the international performance of EMNEs. Yet how entrepreneurial orientation influences international performance is still underexplored. Thus, the current study clarifies the mechanism by examining and testing the mediating role of reverse innovation among the entrepreneurial orientation–international performance link.

This paper aims at investigating the role of institutional entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship to cope with firm’ impasses by adoption of the new technology ahead of other firms. Also, this paper elucidates the importance of own specific institutional and corporate entrepreneurship created from firm’s norm.

The utilized research frame is as follows: first, perspective of studies on institutional and corporate entrepreneurship are performed using prior literature and preliminary references; second, analytical research frame was proposed; finally, phase-based cases are conducted so as to identify research objective.

Kumho Tire was the first tire manufacturer in the world to exploit the utilization of radio-frequency identification for passenger carâ’s tire. Kumho Tire takes great satisfaction in lots of failures to develop the cutting edge technology using advanced information and communication technology cultivated by heterogeneous institution and corporate entrepreneurship.

The firm concentrated its resources into building the organization’s communication process and enhancing the quality of its human resources from the early stages of their birth so as to create distinguishable corporate entrepreneurship.

Transnational entrepreneurship can be considered a new stream of research where migrant entrepreneurship and international business research fields intersect. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework to address the following research question: How do transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market?

Based on the strategic entrepreneurship approach and dynamic capability perspective, this paper suggests a theoretical framework to extend the understanding on how TEs may develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market.

The suggested theoretical framework exhibits how the social ties of TEs affects their firm performance through the mediating effect of a bundle of two organizational processes (opportunity sensing and opportunity seizing) and the moderating effect of institutional distance between countries of origin and residence.

TEs should not solely focus on their ethnic social ties. That is why this paper suggests that ethnic ties in the country of origin and the country of residence (COR) may lead to higher firm performance only if systematically used alongside nonethnic ties in the COR. Furthermore, it is crucial for TEs to understand the importance of dynamic capabilities in developing and sustaining their competitive advantage.

Based on the strategic entrepreneurship approach, this paper suggests a social tie-based model of the dynamic capability to address the theoretical void in the transnational entrepreneurship literature. The linkage between social tie and performance which has been in a black box is examined in terms of how strong and weak social ties may affect different underlying processes of TEs’ dynamic capabilities differently. In contrast to the common conceptualization of institutional distance as a negative moderator in international business literature, institutional distance is theorized as a positive moderator in the suggested theoretical model of transnational entrepreneurship.