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During the last decade, there has been an increasing focus on commercialization of knowledge and technology from universities. However, universities report financing as being the main impediment to successful university spin‐off companies (USOs) creation, leaving valuable inventions un‐commercialized. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model in order to explain financing challenges experienced by USOs.

This paper presents a conceptual model illustrating financing challenges met by USOs, and provides an explanation why TTOs report that obtaining financing is their biggest impediment to spin‐off creation. Two different theoretical perspectives back this conceptual development: Knightian uncertainty and agency theory.

This theoretical examination suggests that increasing levels of uncertainty affect the investor's willingness to fund new companies in a negative way. Through the literature review, clear indications were also found for the increased uncertainty with which USOs are faced. It is therefore natural to conclude that investors are more reluctant to invest in USOs because of the level of uncertainty compared with other entrepreneurial companies.

This study made a generalization of USOs as a homogeneous group of companies, which is an oversimplification. Further research should address how different business models, types of resources and their institutional link affect USOs' capital requirements and their problems in raising the required capital.

The main contribution from this paper is the combination of theoretical insights from the concepts of Knightian uncertainty and agency theory. These combined with insights from previous empirical studies explain why USOs face specific challenges in order to raise risk capital.

The main purpose of this study is to increase the scholarly understanding of managerial growth aspirations in small firms. Research has shown that managers' aspirations are important to ensure firms' growth, but researchers know less of where their aspirations come from and how variation in these aspirations shapes organizational outcomes. By focusing on two growth strategies of particular importance for small firms – innovation and internationalization – the authors map out how managers' ambitious aspirations may create negative organizational effects and also how they may counteract such effects.

The study employs structural equation modeling (SEM) on a sample of 249 Norwegian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The findings of this study suggest that managerial experience is associated with high aspirations as well as high change effectiveness on the managerial team. The authors find that ambitious growth aspirations are associated with exploration in the form of radical innovation but also lead to reduced employee well-being. Managers' level of perceived change effectiveness, on the other hand, is positively associated with radical innovation and also raises employee well-being.

This study highlights the positive and negative effects of managerial aspirations on different organizational outcomes. Further, it shows that managerial teams working effectively together in the face of change is important for the well-being of employees. Results confirm the positive relationship between aspirations for growth and applied growth strategies in organizations. The data sample is, however, extracted from one country only, and the authors cannot exclude the possibility that findings will be different elsewhere.

To ensure successful growth, managers should combine ambitious aspirations with attention to the top management team's (TMT) experience levels and change effectiveness. Assessment of possible needs for development and adjustments could ensure growth processes with limited negative effects for employee well-being.

By distinguishing between growth through international sales (exploitation) and growth through a more change-intensive strategy of radical innovation (exploration), the authors investigate how variations in managerial aspirations and perceptions influence organizational growth processes. This paper paints a unique picture of how managers can be both the cause and cure of employee well-being in change-demanding situations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedent and outcomes of different types of innovation as complementary growth strategies, which may enable exporting small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to achieve success in export markets.

This study is based upon a quantitative survey on Norwegian exporting SMEs. A total of 380 questionnaires were received representing 16.8 per cent response rate. A structural equation modelling analysis is carried out on the sample.

The study finds positive and significant associations between the firm’s growth ambition and the pursuance of product and business model innovations. Moreover, the firm’s export degree and scope has a significant and positive association with its product innovation strategy, but the association with its business model innovation is significantly negative.

The study’s findings indicate that future studies should incorporate different types of innovation strategies since their associations with export performance differ substantially. Treating innovation as a general construct appears to be too simplistic.

The study’s results indicate that focus on product innovation enhances the export performance of SMEs, but that focus on business model innovation has a negative impact. The latter may be too costly and distract focus from the firm’s core competences, whereas product innovation can be assumed to provide further competitive strength.

By taking a holistic approach towards innovation, this study addresses a gap in the literature on innovation and exporting in SMEs in order to investigate the association between different types of innovation-based growth strategies and the firms’ export prosperity.

This review aims to focus on the phenomenon of infant firms that operate internationally right from or close to inception, so‐called international new ventures (INVs) or born global firms. It also aims to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on INVs from the time when such firms emerged in the literature in the early 1990s up until today.

The study is a systematic review of top journals within entrepreneurship, marketing and management over the years 1992‐2004. The focus is primarily on studies with empirical evidence and the review is narrative in nature. The study presents and discusses findings related to the founding of the firm, organizational features, environmental factors, and their influence on market strategy and firm performance.

The study finds great heterogeneity on the factors examined within this relatively narrow defined group of firms. This leads the study to conclude that normative linear models of international expansion render little explanatory and predictive value to the study of these firms.

The study concludes that recent empirical findings on INVs offer insight beyond traditional models of internationalization, and that more theory driven research in the area is required. The paper suggests application of general theories of organizations on the INV phenomenon in an attempt to understand international expansion and market strategies of new firms.

The study represents a comprehensive review of the literature on INVs and serves well as an introduction to the field for students, managers and scholars.

The study offers a much needed recapitulation of the empirical evidence in a relatively new field of research. It offers guidance for future research in a field of research that is still in its infancy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the actual use and market performance effects of information and communication technologies (ICT) with regard to international business‐to‐business marketing activities of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

The analysis is based on survey data from 635 Danish and Norwegian SMEs with international marketing activities. The two primary research questions regarding actual use and performance effects are addressed by descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling, respectively.

Findings suggest that, contrary to expectation, Norwegian and Danish international SMEs are not heavy users of ICT. Rather, ICT is predominantly used for market information search and to develop long‐term customer relationships. In both those areas the use of ICT is positively associated with the firm's satisfaction with its development of new market knowledge. The use of ICT for sales purposes is limited and apparently negatively associated with the firm's satisfaction with its development of new market knowledge. There is no significant association between the use of ICT and the firm's satisfaction with its international performance.

This study contributes with new knowledge regarding the potential and limitations of the use of ICT in international business‐to‐business marketing. Heavy usage of ICT seems to be primarily directed towards information search and relationship development. The study also supports that ICT usage have positive impact on the accumulation of new market knowledge (and indirectly on international performance). Use of ICT for sales activities seems to be quite limited, and perhaps not even advisable. The reason for this may be that media richness associated with face‐to‐face interaction is beneficial for establishment of commitment and trust.

This paper makes an original contribution to the field of knowledge regarding the potential (and limitations) of ICT in international business‐to‐business marketing.

Over the last decade several studies have focused on what have been called International New Ventures or Born Globals – firms that engage in significant international activity a short time after being established. Building on an empirical study of small firms in Norway and France, it was found that more than half of the exporting firms established since 1990 could be classified as Born Globals. This implies that the Born Global issue is not limited to just a few firms, it includes the majority of newly established exporting firms. Furthermore, in terms of global orientation, export strategy, competitive advantages and market situation – the newly established, highly‐involved exporters possess similar characteristics to the old global firms. Also, newly established low level involvement exporters resemble old low level involvement exporters. Examining the differences between newly established firms with high or low export involvement levels revealed that a decision maker’s global orientation and market conditions (home and export markets) are important factors. Because this study found that a firm is either Born Global or “born as local”, the relevance of internationalization process stage models, as described in previous research, came into question. A key implication is that the decisions made during the establishment process of the firm may be more important to future export development than expected, according to the internationalization process models. In many countries export development programs target the established firms in order to help them succeed in export markets. Alternatively, our findings recommend that export assistance programs place their focus on newly established highly‐involved exporters.

This paper aims to elaborate on the crucial effects that a seemingly detrimental policy change in Spain has had on the international entrepreneurial activities of domestic renewable energy (RE) firms.

Primary data were collected from nine RE companies in Spain and then triangulated with secondary data and interviews from informants in other local institutions.

Domestic RE firms, due to an institutional scape driver action, reacted to an increasingly uncertain and generally more adverse renewable energy policy framework in this country by preferring to internationalise towards foreign markets that had lower political uncertainty than the domestic one.

This paper complements previous research primarily on firm-specific factors that enhance internationalising firms’ survival and growth through a focus on the impact of a changing institutional-political environment at the home country-level.

Practitioners in the RE sector should analyse the risk of focusing only on the home market, as it can be too dependent on uncontrolled variations in domestic energy policy.

The findings indicate that a more stable and supportive, long-term perspective in the domestic RE policy is essential for the sustained growth and development of this emerging industry.

To analyse the strategy by which a number of purposefully selected companies were able to use international expansion as a survival-seeking strategy against a drastic policy-level change in the domestic RE market.

Internationalization has often been described as a gradual development, in terms of involvement and entry forms, in which firms are expected to target gradually more distant markets. This study focuses on the entry forms and market selection of five small Norwegian computer software firms. The findings suggest that the firm's network relationships are determinant with regard to which foreign entry forms they choose and to some extent, which markets they decide to enter. Whereas terms such as agent, distributor, licensee, and foreign subsidiary might have clear distinguishing power when physical products are concerned, the picture is far more complex when it comes to software. The firms in the study generally refer to their international partners as agents or distributors or both. When examined more closely a complex pattern of business solutions are encompassed by these terms. It seems also evident that the firms in the study are not concerned with such a distinction but look for competency, solidity and the ability to generate sales when searching for international partners. There seems to be a limited correlation between the firms’ international experience and their foreign entry form and market selection. The firm may choose one entry form in one market and a different one in another similar market, depending very much upon the options available in terms of their network relationships. Some key challenges for the managers of a software company will be to balance the allocation of resources between expanding the network through the current relationships and to focus on establishing new relationships and customers. This study's results illustrate the increasingly complex relationship between firms across national borders.

This paper deals with the effects of firm age on export behavior and performance for small exporters. Using market and technology trends from the last decades, we have classified three generations of small exporters: the traditional, the flexible specialists, and the Born Globals. Building upon a sample of Norwegian exporters these three generations of exporting firms are compared using competitive advantage, manager orientation, export motives, and export strategy. The results revealed several significant distinguishing features between the generations. Important differences were the strong technological competitiveness, niche focus and widespread use of advanced communication technology in the two groups of recently established exporters compared to the older, traditional exporters. The study also showed that the various generations of firms had different export performance antecedents. Key factors for the Born Globals were found to be technological advantage and niche focus combined with strong customer orientation. Among both the other groups — traditional exporters and flexible specialists — marketing advantage, product quality, and various manager orientation factors were important performance determinants. It seems that firm behavior and performance are partly contingent upon the environmental context in existence during the firm's year of establishment, which results in systematic differences between the generations of exporting firms. As the firm's year of establishment has often been a neglected variable in international marketing research, these results suggest we should pay more attention to firm age in future studies, as both export behavior and performance determinants vary between different generations of exporting firms. This study further concludes that we can now distinguish a new generation of exporters; the Born Global firms. One of the most important characteristics of these firms is their speed of internationalization; just a few years after establishment the Born Global firms achieve considerable sales in a number of export markets.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between industry risk taking and risk-taking strategy of born-global firms (BGs), and how industry-related variety moderates that relationship.

The authors apply fixed effect model to analyze 26,499 observations on 10,508 BGs in 276 Chinese cities.

The authors find that industry risk taking positively influences risk-taking strategy of BGs, and industry-related variety positively moderates such relationship.

The findings reveal how BGs formulate their risk-taking strategy given the dilemma of risk nature and hurdles in firm establishment and rapid internationalization. This paper extends understanding on BGs’ strategy making, supplements the theoretical framework on BGs with an integrated viewpoint containing “regional–industry–firm” levels and contributes to the industry variety argument.