Future Research Agenda

The phenomenon of companies achieving early and rapid internationalization, first discovered in the late 1980s, has been studied for over three decades and has been analyzed from different perspectives, substantially contributing to advancing SME internationalization, international entrepreneurship, and international business fields. This chapter critically appraises the state of knowledge on early internationalizing firms, building on the main findings that emerged from the thematic analysis of the systematically selected sample of 323 empirical articles published between 1989 and 2023. We propose a future research agenda and underline the practical and policy implications of this literature review.