What’s so special about Born Globals? Their entrepreneurs or their business model?
The International Business (IB) literature has almost unanimously seen international expansion as slower, riskier, and more expensive than domestic expansion. Hence its surprise with Born Globals (BGs), firms that sell abroad, at birth or shortly afterwards, a significant share of their output. The traditional explanations given for this anomaly have been the exceptional resources of BGs, especially their high level of technology and the high international orientation and experience of their entrepreneurs, as well as their reliance on cheaper internationalization strategies such as the internet and networks. Almost completely overlooked has been the role played by the firm’s business model. We analyze the time it took for a sample of Italian SMEs to reach BG status (25% foreign sales). Entering both traditional and business model variables, we find most of the former, such as the firm’s reliance on internet and social media, its technological intensity, and the foreign language fluency of its founders, to be statistically insignificant, while many business model variables, such as the firm’s number of competitors, the transportation costs it faces, how much marketing mix adaptation it does, and whether it performs after-sales service abroad, are significant predictors of fast international sales.