IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aes/jetimm/v1y2020i1p32-42.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in the Internationalisation of High Growth SMEs in Health Technology Business

Author

Listed:
  • Abdollah Mohammadparast Tabas

    (University of Oulu)

  • Hanna Komulainen

    (University of Oulu)

Abstract

The concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) has recently attracted a lot of research attention. Despite the growing popularity, there is still a limited theoretical, empirical and conceptual understanding of the phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of EE in the high growth SMEs’ internationalisation, specifically in the context of the health technology business in Finland. Due to the limited size of the domestic markets, internationalisation is often the only possibility for these companies to grow their business. In addition to the practical relevance, the topic is also important from the theoretical perspective, since internationalisation has not been addressed adequately in the existing research on EEs. Moreover, empirical studies on EEs are still scarce. This study aims to fill these research gaps by presenting an extensive qualitative explorative study. In total, 19 interviews with health-tech SME’s decision-makers comprising managing directors/chief executive officers and senior managers were conducted during autumn 2019. According to our findings, EE is crucial for high growth health-tech SMEs’ internationalisation, especially in the early phases, but there are also shortcomings in utilizing the EE. EE can enhance internationalisation by providing foreign market entry support, boosting collaboration within the ecosystem, offering various networking opportunities including access to resources and references, and increasing credibility for the high growth SMEs. Overall, this research makes valuable insights into both the theory and practice of EE research. It is among the first attempts to study the role of EE in the high growth SMEs’ internationalisation in the health-tech business and thus provides valuable implications to both academics and business managers.

Suggested Citation

  • Abdollah Mohammadparast Tabas & Hanna Komulainen, 2020. "The Role of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in the Internationalisation of High Growth SMEs in Health Technology Business," Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 32-42, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:aes:jetimm:v:1:y:2020:i:1:p:32-42
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.etimm.ase.ro/RePEc/aes/jetimm/2020/ETIMM_V01_2020_40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Entrepreneurial ecosystems; health technology; high growth SMEs; internationalization.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aes:jetimm:v:1:y:2020:i:1:p:32-42. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucian Onisor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aseeero.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.