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Our 2004 Journal of International Business Studies article, \"Innovation, Organizational Capabilities, and the Born Global Firm\" provided a framework for the phenomenon of early and rapid internationalization among young, entrepreneurial firms. This work can be characterized as an integration of marketing, entrepreneurial, and capability-based thinking around exporting, positioned as the born global exporter. The article also reported findings from a national study of start-up firms that expanded abroad early in their evolution. In the present commentary, we reflect on the contributions of the 2004 article, review the scholarship on the topic over the past decade, and offer suggestions for future inquiry. While the incidence of early internationalization by firms was a novel concept two decades ago, today such firms are found in abundance in many countries. Yet many unresolved research questions remain, including the crucial topic of what happens to \"born global\" firms as they grow and mature over time. Similarly, the issue of why some firms internationalize early, others late in their evolution, and still others choose to remain local, is a fundamental question for international business scholarship.

Although the study of family firm internationalization has generated considerable scholarly attention, existing research has offered varied and at times incompatible findings on how family ownership and management shape internationalization. To improve our understanding of family firm internationalization, we systematically review 220 conceptual and empirical studies published over the past three decades, structuring our comprehensive overview of this field according to seven core international business (IB) themes. We assess the literature and propose directions for future research by developing an integrative framework of family firm internationalization that links IB theory with conceptual perspectives used in the reviewed body of work. We propose a research agenda that advocates a cross-disciplinary, multitheoretic, and cross-level approach to studying family firm internationalization. We conclude that family firm internationalization research has the potential to contribute valuable insights to IB scholarship by increasing attention to conceptual and methodological issues, including micro-level affective motivations, background social institutions, temporal perspectives, and multilevel analyses.

In this editorial for the Special Issue on International Entrepreneurship, we interrelate key concepts about the pursuit of opportunities from the entrepreneurship and international business literatures. In doing so, we consider the assessment of opportunities as an individual-level cognitive activity, the construction of opportunity as a firm-level innovative activity and the shaping of opportunity as an institutional-level structuring activity. We then extend the discussion to explore the notion of a distributed, global ecosystem of opportunities and opportunity seekers, which we believe may provide a platform for valuable future research.

Knight and Cavusgil's journal of International Business Studies Decade Awardwinning article offers numerous contributions to international business research. As one example, it advances cross-disciplinary conversation about entrepreneurial internationalization. A critical review of their study reveals, however, that certain findings require reinterpretation. This commentary does so, discussing the resultant implications and the question of when it is (in)appropriate to use the term \"born global\". Parts of Knight and Cavusgil are then used as a foundation to identify research questions at the level of the firm. Finally, points from Cavusgil and Knight's retrospective are used to argue that we need greater understanding of the individual(s) that are central to the firm's internationalization behaviour. Suggestions for research are made by drawing on concepts and theory from the entrepreneurship, innovation and psychology literatures.

The purpose of this study is to synthesize information about the possible advantages of SME internationalization. The primary question driving this scoping review is: What is the extent to which field of commercial diplomacy has identified its potential to benefit the SMEs, specifically in their internationalization efforts? We do have done a scoping review adhering to a five-step methodology, and extensively reviewing the relevant studies. A systematic literature review was conducted using electronic databases with predefined inclusion-exclusion criteria. 191 articles were screened, yielding 19 relevant studies for final analysis. Our review not only offers a comprehensive analysis of the current research on the relationship between CD and SME internationalization, but also identifies key themes. While doing so, this study sheds light on significant findings, on-going debates, and identifies research gaps that need future exploration. The study’s theoretical and practical implications are also discussed. The role of SMEs in economic growth and innovation is crucial in the context of globalization. Nevertheless, SMEs have several internal and external challenges throughout their process of internationalization. Despite the established significance commercial diplomacy plays in the internationalization efforts of SMEs, centre of attention remains on large organization and their facilitation. While the current body of research mostly focuses on the economic consequences of internationalization for bigger companies, it remains limited on SMEs.

The prevalent view among family-firm internationalization scholars is that family management discourages internationalization. This is because selling abroad is said to require more specialized managers and more resources than selling at home, and yet family firms are unwilling to recruit non-family managers with the required international skills and to dilute their control to obtain the necessary finance. We hypothesize that this argument overlooks the possibility that managers of family-managed SMEs choose business models that both minimize the above-mentioned limitations and leverage the strengths of family governance. Specifically, we argue that selling quality products in global niches allows family-managed SMEs to internationalize without the cosmopolitan managers and the high financial investments required for selling mass-market products abroad; at the same time a global niche business model requires the long time horizon and the high level of social capital that family governance can provide. Modeling a firm’s foreign sales through a gravity model, we test this hypothesis on a large sample of SMEs from four European Union countries. We find that family-managed SMEs have fewer foreign sales than other type of SMEs, but that the difference is partially bridged if family-managed SMEs have adopted a global niche business model.

The current study explored high-quality institutional internationalization for promoting sustainable development of higher education in China, from stakeholders’ perspectives. We assessed students’ and faculty members’ satisfaction regarding factors involved in the internationalization of higher education institutions. We recruited 498 students (undergraduate students and graduate students) and 209 faculty members (research track and administration track) and assessed their satisfaction with institutional internationalization initiatives in multiple dimensions, including international courses, research, cooperation and services. The results revealed that student satisfaction with institutional internationalization was influenced by four factors: international faculty resources, international curriculum, international services, and international campus. Of these factors, international faculty resources had the greatest influence, and international campus had the least influence. Teachers’ satisfaction was influenced by international services, international research, and international cooperation, of which international services had the greatest influence and international cooperation had the least influence. Based on the current results, we suggest that national and local government should promote institutional internationalization in the post-epidemic era, and that Chinese-foreign academic cooperation should be enhanced for both students and faculty members.

Although firms' tendencies to re-enter international operations after exiting from initial internationalization are relatively high, re-internationalization has not received much attention in extant literature. It is vital for managers of de-internationalized firms to understand what aids successful re-internationalization, which prompted us to study the relevance of learning and experiences gained from initial internationalization stages on subsequent strategies when firms re-internationalize. Results from surveying senior managers amongst re-internationalized Indian firms indicated that firms tend to opt for more focused strategies in their choice of products, customer segments, and geographies during re-internationalization than during the initial internationalization period. The findings suggest managers should not be disenchanted from the initial failed internationalization attempts as the learning from the initial internationalization are much helpful when firms re-internationalize. Managers should invest in knowledge management systems to efficiently use such learning to implement more focused strategies leading to successful reinternationalization. The study also has meaningful research and policy implications.

We propose the concept of opportunity belief as a means of understanding individuals as the interpreters of their contexts over the internationalization process of a firm. To illustrate the concept, we conducted a microhistorical analysis on one of the largest forest industry MNEs with an internationalization history of more than 150 years. Historical archival data and rich secondary material provided access to the reasonings of individuals over the firm’s internationalization. This allowed depiction of different types of opportunity beliefs as the drivers of internationalization actions within particular historical contexts. We portray opportunity belief as a complementary lens to current internationalization models focusing primarily on firm-level development.

Buckley et al.’s (J Int Bus Studi 38(4):499–518, 2007) pioneering work concluded that the determinants of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from China were similar to those observed in developed countries – but with a few modifications. In this commentary, we suggest continuing their effort to understand what is distinctive about Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs). We look for underlying explanations that are analytically useful and potentially generalizable, unlike a firm’s nationality, which is a catch-all variable with no analytical value. Based on prior research and Ramamurti (Glob Strategy J 2(1):41–47, 2012a), we argue that the following variables help explain distinctive aspects of CMNE internationalization: (1) their “stage of evolution as a multinational enterprise,” with most CMNEs being infant MNEs rather than mature MNEs; (2) the “global context for internationalization,” which has helped CMNEs internationalize faster than it was possible in earlier decades; (3) “government-created advantages,” which complemented China’s natural endowments and for the most part improved CMNEs’international competitiveness; and (4) “leapfrogging advantage,” which allowed late-mover Chinese firms to gain a competitive advantage in smokestack industries and some sunrise industries. These variables may also explain the behavior of MNEs from other emerging economies and are therefore candidates for inclusion in general models of the internationalization process.