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As part of the mobility of global talent, returnee entrepreneurs from emerging markets with advance technology are particularly challenged by the increasing geopolitical tension. Returnee entrepreneurs have a stronger reliance on the political relationship when establishing successful business at the home countries. Yet this connection with home-country political actors can negatively affect their technology competence obtained from the host countries during geopolitical uncertainty and turbulence. We empirically investigate the challenges that technology-advanced returnee entrepreneurs encountered in the home market from the changes occurred while they were away, as well as the needs to obtain critical resource and gain market entry for adapting the advance technology possessed from aboard. Our aim, nevertheless, is to expand the discussion of the returnee entrepreneurs in the context of current world where unpredictable geopolitical tensions can jeopardize the success of their business. Our study contributes a nuanced understanding of the key factor that driving business success may turn to a trap that constrains returnee entrepreneurship, and accordingly proposes a future research agenda for returnee entrepreneurship and international human mobility in general.

Purpose – Emerging work on returnee entrepreneurs has done little to examine how these individuals coordinate the resources they need to exploit their opportunities. Existing research has recognized the role of context, but this has been quite limited. The chapter provides a novel analytical framework that integrates a resource orchestration perspective with recognition of the heterogeneity of context.

Design/Methodology – The authors build upon returnee entrepreneurship, strategic entrepreneurship theory, and theories relating to context and spillovers to distinguish the implications of temporal, institutional, social, and spatial dimensions of context for resource selection and coordination.

Findings – The authors identify a range of research themes relating to each context. The authors also discuss methodological issues relating to both qualitative and quantitative research.

Originality/Value – The intention is to spur further entrepreneurship, strategy, and international business research.

Purpose – Although there is extensive work on labor mobility, research on entrepreneurial mobility is fragmented and many aspects are largely neglected. We develop a framework for analysis that integrates different perspectives on entrepreneurial mobility to provide a broad agenda for future research.

Design/methodology – We build upon the strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial behaviour theory, resource-based theory and other literatures, to distinguish four quadrants involving high and low geographical mobility and high and low organizational mobility.

Findings – Within each quadrant we identify different types of entrepreneurial mobility, specifically habitual entrepreneurs, management buyouts, university spin-offs, returnee entrepreneurs and transnational entrepreneurs. Issues concerning the development of research programs and methods, with particular emphasis on datasets, are discussed.

Originality/value – It is hoped that this chapter will spur entrepreneurship and strategy scholars to recognize that the scope of the entrepreneurial mobility concept is considerably greater than hitherto appreciated, providing interesting new avenues for theoretical and methodological development in this area.

Transnational migrant entrepreneurship is an increasingly important and multi-faceted process. Because of the ‘double transition’ of Albanian migrants, in terms of migration (spatial transition) and in terms of transition from socialism to capitalism and more specifically the absence of entrepreneurship experience in their homeland during the communist regime, we might think of Albanians as being in a weak position for mastering entrepreneurship. But, paradoxically, the evidence tends to prove the opposite. Albanians have succeeded in identifying various entrepreneurial opportunities, and are nowadays increasingly engaging in a wider range of entrepreneurial activities. The overall aim of this chapter thus is to analyse the causes and consequences of transnational entrepreneurship among Albanian migrants doing business with Albania and Albanian returnees pursuing business activities with their former destination countries. For this purpose, the author draws on face-to-face interviews with 50 Albanian migrant entrepreneurs engaged in cross-border economic activities in Albania, Italy and Greece, supplemented by further interviews with key informants, as well as government policy documents. The analysis in this chapter offers important insights into the two main types of entrepreneur, which are ‘necessity’ and ‘opportunity’ entrepreneurs; the emergence of academic entrepreneurship among Albanian transnational entrepreneurs; and the contribution of transnational migrant entrepreneurs in terms of added value at the individual and community levels, as well as potentially impacting on the country’s economic and social development.

A growing number of individuals identify as cosmopolitans, that is, citizens of the world. They voluntarily move from country to country in pursuit of self-fulfilment in both life and work, and construct a cosmopolitan identity in the process. With the help of three entrepreneurial narratives the authors investigated how cosmopolitan disposition affects entrepreneurial behaviour. The authors found that cosmopolitan entrepreneurs share many common entrepreneurial characteristics, such as openness to opportunities, a need for achievement and the locus of control. However, they also challenge the understanding of entrepreneurship by downplaying the role of environment and interpreting success in an unconventional way. The study demonstrates that this growing group of entrepreneurs deserves more attention from entrepreneurship scholars.

It is well known that entrepreneurs possess human, political and social capital that allow them to be successful. While we know that each of these “capitals” possess value, we know much less about how they interact – for example, are they substitutes or complements? – and whether where the capital was acquired matters. The latter point is particularly Germaine to the issue of global entrepreneurship and the importance of returnee entrepreneurs for economic development. We provide an overview of this research to date and call for an agenda that concentrates more on the total value a portfolio of these capitals generates and on how that capital is acquired both at home and overseas.