Longitudinal Internationalization Processes of Born Globals: Three Chinese Cases of Radical Change and the Global Crisis

The research interests in SMEs’ internationalization processes have increased rapidly in recent decades. Internationalization processes have been studied for many years through different theoretical approaches and many arguments have been discussed in order to give a clearer picture of what internationalization is and how a firm goes international (Welch and Luostarinen, 1988; Johanson and Mattsson, 1988; Mattsson and Hertz, 1998). In the past two decades, born global studies have been conducted mainly in high-tech industries, but born globals have also been identified in other fields, like the design sector and low-tech (e.g. food) industries. Both external and internal factors, such as the owner’s background, orientation and commitment of the owners/key managers, networking, modern communication methods, firm’s tangible and intangible resources, industrial clusters, and governmental influence have to be taken into account to analyze the reasons for driving born global firms’ fast internationalization and to illustrate their development paths.