A Path Forward for Research on Born Global Firms

By the 1980s, many young companies began to undertake early and rapid internationalization, due in part to factors related to globalization and advancing technologies. Upon observing such trends, we developed a research program on what came to be known as ‘born global firms’. Our research coalesced in the development of an article that appeared in the 2004 edition of the Journal of International Business Studies. As of June 2022, the article has generated more than 4200 citations at Google Scholar. We defined born globals as entrepreneurial start-ups that, from or near their founding, seek to derive substantial revenue from the sale of products in international markets (Knight and Cavusgil 2004). They are akin to the ‘international new ventures’ (INVs) investigated around the same period by Oviatt and McDougall (1994), who defined such firms as businesses that, from inception, seek to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries.