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The purpose of this study is to develop internationalization process theory by examining the relationship between small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) international experience and their degree of insidership in newly opened business networks.

The study applies a quantitative approach. Data were collected on-site at 203 SMEs having entered the Baltic States, Poland, Russia and China. The data are analysed with structural equation modeling in SmartPLS.

The paper reveals that international experience is positively associated with both the country and customer experience in the newly opened business network. Country experience, in turn, is strongly associated with a firm's degree of insidership in the business network. Conflicting with the hypothesized model, no support is found for the direct relationship between international experience and insidership. Nor does the analysis reveal any significant relationship between a firm's customer experience, in terms of variation, in the newly opened business network and the degree of insidership in the network.

The paper empirically discriminates different types of international experience derived from theory and examines their relationship with the degree of firm insidership in newly opened business networks.

Theoretically this paper advances internationalization process theory by developing its network aspect as well as discriminating different experience types and their role in predicting network insidership in newly opened business networks.

The purpose of the study is to examine the political sources of uncertainty in the internationalization process of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The authors theoretically derived a research model embracing three hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested on a sample of 203 on-site interviewed SMEs. Regression analysis is used to test two individual hypotheses and one interaction effect.

The regression analysis reveals that political knowledge possessed by the firm reduces uncertainty in the internationalization process. Political turbulence is shown to increase uncertainty in the internationalization. The interaction shows that political turbulence obliterates the uncertainty reducing effect by political knowledge.

The authors identifies two main political sources of uncertainty in the internationalization process of SMEs. For managers and business researchers, it is shown that experiential knowledge is useful under stable conditions. When turbulence increases, however, firms need to develop alternative strategies for uncertainty management.

This study is the first to test the uncertainty reducing effects of experiential knowledge in turbulent environments. Thus, by running the interaction between political knowledge and political turbulence, the authors shed new light on the usefulness of previous experiences in the internationalization process.

Few researchers and even fewer practitioners would deny that serendipitous events play a central role in the growth process of firms. However, most international marketing models ignore the role of serendipity in the opportunity discovery process. The authors provide a nuanced view on international opportunities by developing the role of serendipitous opportunities in the foreign market entry process. The authors develop a model integrating the notions of serendipity, entrepreneurial logic, experiential knowledge and network knowledge redundancy. From the study’s model, the authors condense three sets of hypotheses on the relationships among experiential knowledge and entry strategy, network knowledge redundancy, entry strategy and serendipity.

The authors confront the study’s hypotheses with data collected on-site at 168 Swedish firms covering 234 opportunities, and to test the hypotheses, the authors ran ordinary least squares (OLS) regression tests in three steps.

The results of the study’s analysis reveal that experiential knowledge and network knowledge redundancy both lead to a logic based on rigid planning and systematic search, which in turn reduces the likelihood that serendipitous opportunities will be realized in the foreign market entry process.

This is the first study that develops a measure of opportunities that are the outcome of serendipitous events. In addition, the authors integrate network and learning theories and internationalization theory by establishing antecedents to, and outcomes of, the entry strategy.

This case study describes how Alfa Laval instigated and deployed virtual working to develop the response to a major strategic initiative.

The challenge was to engage the top 30 managing directors located in countries across the globe in a six‐month project timeframe.

The solution was to engage Ashridge Business School and specifically its expertise in working virtually and in developing strategy processes.

The main thrust of the paper is to describe the important design parameters that ensure successful virtual strategy development as well as some of the tangible benefits this approach has compared with traditional strategy development processes.