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The authors of this chapter investigate internationalisation strategies of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in China. We highlight the specific challenges that Chinese SMEs encounter when selecting international country markets in terms of distance and entry speed. The authors adopt an ambidexterity perspective that differs from traditional explanations of internationalisation behaviour by highlighting the need to balance seemingly disparate options for international expansion. Three cases provide an illustration of how Chinese companies combine distant with proximate market entries and slow with accelerated entry speed. The authors highlight how these strategies can drive and enhance international aspirations of Chinese SMEs.

The varying nature of the competitive environment of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), contributing significantly to gross domestic product in most countries, has made their moving toward internationalization and global competition unavoidable in such a way that the life cycle of research in this area is experiencing a period of rapid growth. This study aims to evaluate the status of research on SME internationalization based on bibliographic records retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus.

Using a scientometric analysis, reviewing the important points and the boundaries of research on SME internationalization as well as practicing co-occurrence and burst detection analysis.

Through a rigorous examination of the crucial points and boundaries within the realm of SMEs internationalization research, coupled with an analysis of co-occurrence and burst detection techniques to detect contemporary hotbed topics, this study has uncovered that the predominant focus of current discourse centers around the areas of networks and networking, as well as internationalization models and entry into the global arena. Moreover, it gives insight that future investigations will shift toward enhancing SME internationalization performance, while simultaneously prioritizing the expeditiousness of their entrance into international markets. The insights garnered from this inquiry are expected to facilitate salient contributions to future literature in this area, thereby advancing our understanding of these complex phenomena.

The trend of the research in this field can be useful for enthusiasts. In this context, the life cycle of research on SME internationalization has been drawn that shows the period of research growth of publications is almost between 2005 and 2023, and the saturation will be approximately from 2023 to 2035. The top researching SME internationalization in the world have been occurred in the USA, England, Canada, Sweden countries and in Department of Management, Department of Marketing, School of Management, Faculty of Management Studies institutions. Also, most of the research has been published in Journal of International Business Studies, International Business Review and Strategic Management Journal.

This study accordingly provided a valuable perspective for future research in this line.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies face significant challenges in formulating effective strategies to enter international markets, particularly amid uncertain conditions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, there is a pressing need to examine the performance of these SMEs and evaluate their internationalization process. This study aims to examine the effects of international entrepreneurial orientation on the internationalization performance of SMEs and the mediating effects of organizational dynamic capability and organizational culture in Indonesia.

This study used a quantitative method with a survey approach by distributing questionnaires to 206 SMEs in Indonesia that have implemented internationalization practices. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to predict and estimate relationships.

This study finds that one of the SMEs’ strategies to encounter the new normal era of COVID-19 is to improve their internationalization performance, especially by actively participating in international markets. The empirical results show that organizational dynamic capabilities and organizational culture are proven to fully mediate the relationship between international entrepreneurial orientation and the internationalization performance of SMEs. Meanwhile, international entrepreneurial orientation does not directly affect SMEs’ internationalization performance. This study confirms the mediating role of organizational dynamic capabilities and organizational culture in dynamic capabilities theory and their relevance to internationalization.

This study provides valuable insights and encourages owner-managers and policy-makers in emerging economies, particularly Indonesia, to develop organizational dynamic capabilities and organizational culture that align with the demands of internationalization.

Striving for growth since their early stages, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly adopting an entrepreneurial behavior based on a rapid and early international expansion. Although some extant research have been done on the dynamic capabilities of SMEs’ accelerated internationalization–born global (BG) SMEs, no study was, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, carried on the microfoundations underlying this phenomenon. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature and contribute to the growing theory development of SME’s microfoundations.

This paper proposes an integrated conceptual framework to better identify the microfoundations that influence born global SMEs internationalization by integrating individual, structural and processual – the microfoundations approach within the dynamic capabilities of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring.

Our propositions argue that born global SMEs are characterized by dynamic capabilities based on a combination of some individual (manager’s human and social capital, such as its personal orientation, experiences, cognition and intuition), process (market learning, technology development) and structural (agility, communication/coordination) factors that helps a lot in the acceleration of the internationalization process.

Empirical study should be done to enrich the conceptual material.

To identify some international opportunities, companies should rely on the entrepreneurial orientation of its managers, its experience and network as well as the market-related learning and technological processes. The managerial cognition is important to seize opportunities while the manager’s human capital is needed to reconfigure resources while internationalizing rapidly.

This research shows that individual attributes are important but insufficient to accelerate the internationalization process. Some individual characteristics are more useful in sensing international opportunities rapidly, such as manager’s international entrepreneurial, past experience and network, However, the managerial cognition is important to seize opportunities, whereas the manager’s human capital is needed to reconfigure resources while internationalizing rapidly.

Born global firms must develop several dynamic capabilities to foster their accelerated early international development. This paper gives insights about the individual, structural and processual of sensing international opportunities, seizing and reconfiguring resources and competencies for born globals.

The purpose of this study is to provide a foundational understanding of the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the context of renewable energy markets. The focus is on exploring and identifying the managerial-, firm- and environmental-level antecedents to their international expansion, which also furthers the understanding of the distinct SME’s internationalization context within the renewable energy market.

The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study approach in a Finnish SME context and identifies the antecedents’ relative prominence at the managerial, firm and environmental levels.

The findings indicate that, although internationalization antecedents of renewable energy SMEs differ owing to market forces such as trends, networks and changing regulatory policies, they share antecedents similar to those of SMEs in other industries.

The main limitation of this study is its single-country home market empirical context. Future studies should expand analysis to different regulatory and regional environments.

To the authors’ knowledge, there are few studies that explore the antecedents of SMEs’ internationalization, especially in the renewable energy market context. Hence, this study contributes to the international business and entrepreneurship literature by illustrating the fundamental managerial-, firm- and environmental-level antecedents to the internationalization of SMEs operating in the renewable energy business. In addition, it highlights the peculiarities of renewable energy SMEs’ internationalization, suggesting that extant research on SMEs’ internationalization has not adequately captured the intricacies present in the internationalization of renewable energy enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the influence of the internet on the internationalisation process and international customer relationship interactions of UK manufacturing small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The paper is positioned at the interface of the literature on international entrepreneurship and the internet.

The paper discusses the findings from multiple case studies of ten UK manufacturing SMEs from a variety of UK sectors, producing high‐, medium‐ and low‐tech offerings. In‐depth interviews with directors or managers of the SMEs were conducted. Individual and cross‐case analysis was carried out using coding frameworks to reduce and analyse the data and capture patterns in the findings.

The findings reveal how the influence of the internet in the internationalisation process and international customer relationship interactions differed in the high‐, medium‐or low‐tech SME categories. The influence of the internet differed across three main dimensions: the way in which the SMEs invested in and used different internet applications for internationalisation and customer relationship support, the SMEs' perceptions of the internet as a tool to support communication with international customers; the SMEs' reliance on more personal and interactive forms of contact with international customers.

The results demonstrate that the level of technological advancement of an SME's offerings has an important bearing on how these firms adopt the internet in their internationalisation process and gain advantages in their international customer interactions. The managerial implications of the study are relevant for manufacturing SMEs, their customers and government agencies involved with SMEs.

This research is amongst the first empirical contributions to examine the themes of the internet, internationalisation and international customer interactions in UK manufacturing SMEs and to highlight the importance of the level of technological advancement of an SME's offerings in distinguishing the ways in which the internet is used by entrepreneurial small firms in their internationalisation process.

This paper aims to systematically review and evaluate extant literature on knowledge acquisition and transfer in international small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and to identify the requisite types of knowledge acquired and transferred in this context. The research further determines the mechanisms enabling SMEs to process this knowledge, unpacks the benefits of both knowledge acquisition and transfer for international SMEs and links them to the market success.

The research has conducted a comprehensive systematic review of existing literature on market knowledge acquisition and its transfer, in the context of international SMEs, utilizing peer-reviewed articles published in top tier journals without any custom range of time.

The search strategy resulted in 37 reviewed academic articles, whose analysis identifies and elucidates on the best practices of knowledge acquisition and transfer in the context of international SMEs; the type of the knowledge acquired and transferred; the form and mechanism of the intersection of these processes; and the benefits gained. The findings, crucially, also identify and illuminate extant research gaps and insufficiencies and develop a comprehensive research agenda for the way forward.

The present study offers a uniquely comprehensive perspective on a topic of diachronic and, currently, rising significance to scholars and practitioners alike. Transcending its descriptive value, though, it further identifies extant knowledge deficiencies, it distils and consolidates critical knowledge and prescribes avenues for research towards the growth and development of international SMEs and born globals.

The main purpose of this study is to explain the combined effects of host country weak network ties and absorptive capacity on the innovative foreign knowledge inflows of international high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Data are drawn from the two largest and most authoritative German Federal Government census-databases of biotech and nanotech SMEs. A structured survey questionnaire was administered and regression analysis adopted.

This study demonstrates weak network ties in the host country and developing absorptive capacity produce a combined effect that positively influences international high-tech SMEs innovative foreign knowledge inflows. Also, host country weak network ties and absorptive capacity when considered separately, each respectively, positively influence innovative foreign knowledge inflows.

The results help inform key personnel in international high-tech SMEs about the relevance of host country weak network ties and absorptive capacity for foreign knowledge inflows. In addition, the results help policymakers and think-tanks to promote tailored advice and guidance e.g. those policymakers implementing the EU Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan.

There is a recent call in the literature to combine network theory and absorptive capacity theory to better explain knowledge creation in the context of international high-tech SMEs knowledge sourcing. By addressing this call, the study provides a more refined and comprehensive account of international high-tech SMEs innovative foreign knowledge inflows.

This study aims to explore the effect of collaboration networks (domestic and international collaboration networks) on the innovation performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It also investigates the mediating role of business model innovation, the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation and government institutional support between them.

Hierarchical regression analysis is adopted to test the hypotheses based on survey data provided by 223 manufacturing SMEs in China.

The results reveal that domestic and international collaboration networks positively affect SMEs' innovation performance. Business model innovation mediates domestic and international collaboration networks-SMEs’ innovation performance relationships. Entrepreneurial orientation positively moderates international collaboration networks–SMEs’ innovation performance relationship, and government institutional support positively moderates domestic and international collaboration networks–SMEs’ innovation performance relationships.

The findings indicate that managers of SMEs should invest in domestic and international collaboration networks and business model innovation to enhance SMEs' innovation performance. Moreover, entrepreneurial orientation and government institutional support should be valued when SMEs try to enhance their innovation performance by embedding in domestic and international collaboration networks.

This study broadens the authors' understanding of the relationship between collaboration networks and firms' innovation performance by classifying collaboration networks into domestic and international dimensions and investigating their direct impacts on SMEs' innovation performance. Besides, this study reveals how and when domestic and international collaboration networks influence the innovation performance of SMEs.

The study this chapter reports focuses on how network theory contributes to the understanding of the internationalization process of SMEs and measures the effect of network capability on performance in international trade and has three research objectives.

The first objective of the study relates to providing new insights into the international market development activities through the application of a network perspective. The chapter reviews the international business literature to ascertain the development of thought, the research gaps, and the shortcomings. This review shows that the network perspective is a useful and popular theoretical domain that researchers can use to understand international activities, particularly of small, high technology, resource-constrained firms.

The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of network capability. This chapter presents a model for the impact of network capability on international performance by building on the emerging literature on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. The model conceptualizes network capability in terms of network characteristics, network operation, and network resources. Network characteristics comprise strong and weak ties (operationalized as foreign-market entry modes), relational capability, and the level of trust between partners. Network operation focuses on network initiation, network coordination, and network learning capabilities. Network resources comprise network human-capital resources, synergy-sensitive resources (resource combinations within the network), and information sharing within the network.

The third research objective is to determine the impact of networking capability on the international performance of SMEs. The study analyzes 11 hypotheses through structural equations modeling using LISREL. The hypotheses relate to strong and weak ties, the relative strength of strong ties over weak ties, and each of the eight remaining constructs of networking capability in the study. The research conducts a cross-sectional study by using a sample of SMEs drawn from the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

The study supports the hypothesis that strong ties are more influential on international performance than weak ties. Similarly, network coordination and human-capital resources have a positive and significant association with international performance. Strong ties, weak ties, trust, network initiation, synergy-sensitive resources, relational capability, network learning, and information sharing do not have a significant association with international performance. The results of this study are strong (R2=0.63 for performance as the outcome) and provide a number of interesting insights into the relations between collaboration or networking capability and performance.

This study provides managers and policy makers with an improved understanding of the contingent effects of networks to highlight situations where networks might have limited, zero, or even negative effects on business outcomes. The study cautions against the tendency to interpret networks as universally beneficial to business development and performance outcomes.