1. ¹Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
2. ²Uppsala University, Uppasala, Sweden

Correspondence: JA Mathews, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia. Tel: +61 2 9850 6082; Fax: +61 2 9850 9942; E-mail: john.mathews@mq.edu.au

Received 29 November 2004; Revised 2 August 2006; Accepted 15 August 2006; Published online 5 April 2007.

Abstract

The initial stages of internationalisation, prior to firms having established their definitive sources of advantage, remain the relatively unexplored area of the international business (IB) literature. At these early stages, where firms are seeking to establish themselves, and new multinational firms are appearing to exploit new opportunities created by globalisation, the entrepreneurial aspects of internationalisation come to the fore. In this paper we aim to delineate an emerging field of IB scholarship: we use the appearance of international new ventures, and the phenomenon of accelerated internationalisation that they feature, to identify a set of issues that has slipped through the net of some of the existing IB frameworks. We propose that the salient features of accelerated and early internationalisation by the newly internationalising firm are best captured in a framework that is found at the intersection of entrepreneurial and internationalisation perspectives, which we propose be known as international entrepreneurial dynamics. We discuss such a framework in terms of entry points and pathways mapped by firms as they probe the IB arena, and the key factors that impinge on behaviour and strategic choices. In line with recent developments in the entrepreneurship literature, these are grouped into three milestones of entrepreneurial processes that extend across national boundaries: (1) the discovery of new opportunities; (2) the deployment of resources in the exploitation of these opportunities; and (3) the engagement with competitors. Implications for MNE and internationalisation theory are discussed.