Resilient growth in international entrepreneurship

KEYWORDS:

• International entrepreneurship
• resilience
• business model
• SME internationalization
• digitalization

Introduction

International entrepreneurship is the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities across national borders (Reuber et al., 2018), behaviourally a combination of innovative, proactive and risk-seeking behaviours that crosses national borders and is intended to create value in organizations (McDougall & Oviatt, 2000). Agile and resilient entrepreneurial firms and individuals are able to take advantage of their international entrepreneurial orientation and find international opportunities even in times of global uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic conditions (Torkkeli, 2021a; Torkkeli, 2021b ; Zahra, 2020a). In such environments characterized by high volatility and uncertainty, the role of entrepreneurial resilience (Bullough et al., 2014; Bullough & Renko, 2013) can differentiate between survival and failure of enterprises, and the speed with which international new ventures can learn can determine their growth and survival in the long term (Zahra, 2020a). The uncertainty brought on by crises and external shocks also presents opportunities to firms for digitalization and business model change (Seetharaman, 2020), provided that they are resilient enough to seize those opportunities and have the self-efficacy needed to cope with the uncertainty (Torkkeli et al., 2021). While internationalization is a risky process, it can also be a risk diversification strategy for small entrepreneurial firms (Saarenketo et al., 2022). Having an international outlook and orientation are crucial for them to develop resilience needed for international growth (Boso et al., 2017).

It is with this backdrop that the present special issue in Small Enterprise Research focusing on resilient growth in international entrepreneurship is published. The collection of articles in this special issue shed light on how resilience and growth are manifested and interlinked in international entrepreneurship during times of uncertainty and political turbulence (cf. Zahra, 2020b; Zahra, 2022). The five empirical studies comprising the special issue address the concepts on resilience and growth in international entrepreneurship from several theoretical perspectives, units of analysis and through a diverse set of country contexts.

Overview of the articles

The role of business models is crucial for international entrepreneurship (e.g. Asemokha et al., 2021; Hennart, 2014; Rask, 2014), while Korber and McNaughton (2017) noted the need for research to shed light on entrepreneurial responses to disruptions and on entrepreneurial resilience in light of such disruptions. The first article in this special issue by Eriksson et al. (2022) links business model innovation with the concept of resilience in the international growth of SMEs, by developing the SME international resilience construct, which combines concepts on organizational resilience, business model innovation and international growth in the SME to guide future international entrepreneurship research on these topics. Based on a multiple-case study on three Finnish SMEs, they propose that international resilience SMEs are created through a process of business model innovation through the five forces of digitalization, strategic collaboration, customer intimacy, agile use of resources and expertise, and an improved revenue model. In addition to helping clarify the role of resilience in the international entrepreneurship domain of research, the study contributes to the research on the role of business model innovation in internationalization of SMEs, which has until recently (Asemokha et al., 2021; Colovic, 2022) received notably little empirical research attention despite the noted importance of the business model concept for the domain.

The second article in this special issue is by Vuorio et al. (2022), which applies a configurational approach using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to differentiate between capabilities and resources in early and late internationalizing firms. The study posits the concepts of cognitive flexibility (Martin & Rubin, 1995) and grit (Duckworth et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) as key determinants of successful entrepreneurial internationalization during the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus sheds light on how the distinct embodiments of entrepreneurial resilience are linked to early internationalization of firms. The study also extends the discussion on the role of slack resources in entrepreneurial internationalization (cf. Kiss et al., 2018; Sui & Baum, 2014) and incorporates consideration of international opportunity recognition capabilities as necessary condition for rapid internationalization. In doing so, it joins the discussion on the role of dynamic capabilities in international entrepreneurship (e.g. Al-Aali & Teece, 2014; Torkkeli et al., 2015; Weerawardena et al., 2007).

The third article in the special issue (Elo et al., 2022) examines the concept of resilience by illustrating business model adaptation of migrant entrepreneurs from a language perspective. Cultural background and language characteristics impact both entrepreneurial behaviour (Ivanova-Gongne et al., 2022) and international business relationships (Brannen et al., 2017; Tenzer et al., 2017), and therefore shedding light on the role that language has for international entrepreneurs is an important yet understudied area of international entrepreneurship research. The study contributes by describing how resilience strategies of migrant entrepreneurs are related to changes in their business models and how the native language of the entrepreneurs can be seen as mediating those changes. The finding that language can be part of the business model value or adaptation of entrepreneurs is an interesting notion that is both worthy of more research attention in the international entrepreneurship domain than extant research has paid it until now.

The special issue rounds up with two studies adopting country-level analysis to examine resilient international growth from an entrepreneurial ecosystem and digitalization perspectives. Using data from ca. 50 countries covering both developed and developing economies, the studies help identify the barriers to resilient growth of entrepreneurial ecosystems in different country contexts, and the role of internationalization strategies in overcoming those barriers (Henn et al., 2022), while also clarifying how external shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic can enable digitalization of entrepreneurial activity especially in less developed countries. The concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem provides a promising framework for studying international entrepreneurship (Theodoraki & Catanzaro, 2022; Velt et al., 2018) and therefore comparative studies such as these two are valuable additions to this emerging stream of research in international entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial ecosystems differ in their resilience, and thus one important underlying framework of resilient growth in international entrepreneurship could be argued to be the extent that regional environmental ecosystems can maintain their resilience over periods of volatility and uncertainty and keep supporting born globals and international new ventures through crises such the COVID-19 pandemic.

In sum, the contributed studies in this special issue provide a valuable and timely addition to the international entrepreneurship field, assessing resilient growth through entrepreneurial internationalization, international comparisons of entrepreneurship and through comparative international entrepreneurship – i.e. the three main types of the international entrepreneurship domain ontology (cf. Jones et al., 2011).

Conclusion

The benefits of entrepreneurial resilience are heightened during volatile and uncertain times (Bullough & Renko, 2013), times not unlike international entrepreneurship have been facing in recent years (Zahra, 2020a; Zahra, 2022). The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular provides opportunities for digital entrepreneurship (Modgil et al., 2022) and thus the role of highly digital firms known as born digitals in international entrepreneurship and business (Monaghan et al., 2020; Vadana et al., 2019) is likely to become pronounced due to it. While in some ways dissimilar in nature from the coronavirus pandemic, the crisis that is the war in Ukraine is also expected to have an impact in international entrepreneurship. Zahra (2022) notes that the resulting weakening of international institutions may result in decline in international new ventures in future (Zahra, 2022). However, it is also the case that, at least regionally within Europe, the crisis is accelerating the long-discussed transition to renewable energy production and consumption, providing new international entrepreneurial opportunities for environmental and sustainable international entrepreneurship.

While the nature of specific global crises may thus impact international entrepreneurship differently, the studies in this special issue attest to the importance of developing resilience, to not only cope with uncertainty in the environment but also to be ready to seize the new opportunities opened up by them. Entrepreneurial resilience has been often pointed out as a successful coping mechanism for entrepreneurs to survive in uncertain times (e.g. Branicki et al., 2017). This special issue attests to the fact that resilience is an enabling factor not just for the international growth of enterprises in general, but also for business model innovation and digitalization in international entrepreneurship specifically. As such, we see it as a starting point for research on resilience in international entrepreneurship and a valuable addition to recent research emphasizing the role of digitalization, sustainability and entrepreneurial ecosystems in the international entrepreneurship domain.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).