In an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalries, emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs) face unprecedented challenges in sustaining cross-border innovation, particularly as technological competition becomes increasingly entangled with national security agendas. Integrating the literature on geopolitics in international relations with EMNE subsidiary innovation, this study investigates whether and to what extent inter-country geopolitical tensions influence the innovation performance of EMNEs’ R&D subsidiaries in advanced economies. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms’ foreign R&D subsidiaries, we find that escalating geopolitical tensions between home and host countries significantly reduce the innovation output of these subsidiaries. Furthermore, the number of host-national innovation partners of a foreign R&D subsidiary can help mitigate the negative effect of geopolitical tensions on its innovation pursuits, while its local same-parent sisters can exacerbate this adverse impact. Our study enhances the understanding of how international politics affect EMNE subsidiary innovation and advances the political risk literature by revealing the role of subsidiary-level networks in shaping firm vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions.

Using a simple model, we analyse the effects on the global economy of unilaterally banning inward FDI (IFDI). Unilateral bans on IFDI may provoke retaliation from other countries (bilateral FDI ban), which further disrupts the global system. The most striking, unintended consequence of banning inward FDI revealed by our model is that in the scenario where both advanced and emerging countries impose bilateral inward FDI bans, the former gain little from banning inward FDI and bear the risk of losing much to the latter. This result is mainly driven by the prohibition on advanced country MNEs locating production activities of technology intensive products in emerging countries.

Dynamic changes in global technological and geopolitical dynamics have stimulated major shifts in international entrepreneurship (IE) research. In this study, we highlight four such major transitions in scholarly thinking about the international activities of startups in advanced countries that have important implications for public policies: (1) the changing role of digitization from enablers startups’ international activities to intangible strategic agents; (2) the transition to an ecosystem-centric view emphasizing platforms and network-based approaches; (3) fractured geopolitics and their market contestability implications; and (4) the evolution towards sustainable growth. We label these four transitions DEFS (Digitization, Ecosystems, Fracture, Sustainability). In turn, these four transitions require supplementing the traditional market opportunity-based definition of the international activities of startups with a focus on the connectivity of people, money, ideas, and intellectual capital. We discuss the public policy implications of these transitions.

Research Summary We present novel theoretical arguments suggesting that the contraction of international market presence does not only allow firms to expand their presence into new business domains, but also to resume their international market presence in the long term. We argue that when firms contract their international market presence, they spark two subsequent processes: First, they free up non-scale free financial resources that become available for expanding into new business domains. Subsequently, such expansion creates new scale free technological knowledge resources that facilitate renewed international expansion. We find support for the existence of this novel growth trajectory in an analysis of changes in the international market presence and business segment presence of an extensive sample of public US-based firms between 1997 and 2019. Managerial Summary Political frictions, economic crises, and pandemics in the wake of the 21st century have led to volatility in the international presence of firms. In this article, we argue and show that firms that contract their international market presence can use scarce financial resources that are freed up due to such contraction to expand their business scope. In turn, business scope expansion allows these firms to create new technological knowledge resources that support resumed international expansion. Generalizing this phenomenon, we argue that, in an age where firms need to navigate international contraction and expansion, contracting international presence in the short term does not only allow the expansion of business domains but also supports the expansion of international presence in the long term. Studying an extensive sample of public US-based firms between 1997 and 2019 lends support to this view.

We propose a typology that captures the heterogeneity of international new ventures’ (INVs’) entrepreneurial behavior and their commitment to foreign markets. The typology identifies four types of INVs, highlighting the dynamic interplay between the degree of radicalness of their entrepreneurial behavior and the level of their foreign market commitment. By integrating theories from both international business and entrepreneurship, we illustrate how the diverse underlying capabilities and networks of different INV types provide strategic advantages. Moreover, we argue that changes in the degree of radicalness in INVs’ entrepreneurial behavior over time reveal important temporal dynamics with strategic and performance implications. Our typology addresses a limitation in international entrepreneurship research by emphasizing the INVs’ entrepreneurial essence, which has often been overlooked. Prior conceptualizations of INVs have primarily focused on aspects such as the degree and mode of internationalization, neglecting the diversity of their entrepreneurial approaches. Consequently, our understanding of the sources of INVs’ competitive advantage and resilience in international markets has been limited. Our typology offers an array of novel research questions that merit thorough empirical and theoretical explorations.

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Adopting novel approaches in business administration teachings is difficult as conventions are based on case study readings. We evaluated the use of immersive virtual reality (VR) case studies for business administration strategy studies. The use of VR case studies was well received by the students and improved their understanding. This approach can revolutionize business administration teachings and serve as a model for other fields looking to incorporate innovative education methods.

This study contributes to firm internationalization theory by identifying domestic patents and international standards as industry-level attributes that differently affect the ability of firms to internationalize. Firms operating in industries with extensive patenting enhance internationalization via technology-based competitive advantages that allow overcoming liabilities of foreignness (LOFs). Furthermore, firms operating in industries with extensive standardization enhance internationalization via the reduction of LOFs that manifest in transaction costs and information asymmetries. Yet operating in industries replete with both domestic patents and international standards raises challenges for internationalizing firms due to the incompatibility of these attributes with respect to LOFs, thus domestic patents and international standards yield a negative joint effect on firm internationalization. We test these priors by employing panel data on the internationalization of up to 4248 publicly-traded U.S. firms in the manufacturing sector over the 1997–2019 period.

Although MNEs create inventions both internally and collaboratively with partners as well as within and across countries, we know very little about the effects that combining such inventive activities have on their profitability. This study develops an invention-based perspective that considers how MNEs' profitability is influenced by the ways they organize the development of inventions across organizational boundaries (internally or collaboratively) and geographic boundaries (within or across countries). This perspective postulates that profitability is not merely driven by advantageous technological endowments but also by how such technological assets have been created. Accordingly, it explains why specific combinations of inventive activities across the two boundaries affect the likelihood of creating breakthrough inventions differently, provide different revenue and cost advantages, and have different effects on MNEs' profitability. It further explains why cross-country inventions contribute more to profitability when they are internalized, while within-country inventions are more profitable when they are created collaboratively.

We examine the effects of founder teams' firm- and industry prior work experience on startup growth in the context of high technology industries. We study these effects both on the early growth of startups and on their growth, after accumulating experiential knowledge. Integrating the literatures on human capital, imprinting and competency traps, we develop a typology of four combinations of founder prior experience: founder same firm and same industry experience, founder same industry but other firm experience, founder same firm but other-industry experience, and founder other-industry and other firm experience. Using data from 153 Israeli high technology startups, we find significant variations in the effects of these combinations on startup growth, which also vary between the early and later years of these startups.

The strength and innovativeness of small open economies (SOECs) have long attracted multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) entry. However, in their quest for new knowledge and technological capabilities, MNEs have been active in acquiring the technology-based startups in these countries. While some of these acquisitions are beneficial to the development and growth of SOECs’ entrepreneurial ecosystems, others can have serious long-term negative effects that have not been sufficiently recognized in the literature. We discuss the policy implications of MNEs’ acquisitions of technology-based startups, especially for SOECs’ entrepreneurial ecosystems.

We examine the effect of international new ventures’ (INVs) congenital knowledge inherited from their founding teams vs. their experiential knowledge gained through learning by doing on the initiation vs. continuation of their international growth. Data from 144 technology INVs show that the effect of congenital knowledge fades as experiential knowledge accrues over time and fuels sustained international growth. The relationships are moderated by whether founder teams’ work experience is in the same or a different industry as the INV as well as the level of external funding received by the INV. Our study and results contribute to the literature on INVs’ post-entry internationalization.

We explore coevolution in the growth of technological knowledge and international scope in multinational corporations (MNCs). We focus on technological knowledge and international scope because they are core to the performance of MNCs and because research has found that technological knowledge stimulates international growth, while internationalization stimulates technological growth. We address this seeming paradox by consolidating arguments about their growth under the coevolutionary umbrella. In so doing, we advance a novel coevolutionary argument: technological knowledge and international scope are both outcomes of interdependent, long-term strategic decisions aimed at optimizing the complementary effects of both dimensions on MNC performance. Accordingly, we develop a formal model of the dynamic processes by which technological knowledge and international scope coevolve. Our dynamic optimization model identifies four coevolutionary trajectories: (1) a trajectory in which growth in technological knowledge and international scope occur simultaneously; (2) a trajectory that has simultaneous reductions in both; (3) a trajectory in which technologically rich but domestically oriented firms expand international scope but reduce technological knowledge; and (4) a trajectory in which highly internationalized but technologically lagging firms expand technological knowledge but reduce international scope.

Research SummaryA long‐standing void in international business literature is understanding whether and how the internalization choices of competing multinational enterprises (MNEs) affect each other. This paper presents a game‐theoretic, location‐allocation mathematical model that predicts the organizational boundaries of competing MNEs. Given multiple players in the market, the game analyzes the competition between MNEs with respect to market share, yielding Nash equilibria that determine how many MNEs will be left in the market, and whether their production and marketing sites are internalized or outsourced. Results of computational experiments suggest that the internalization choices of profit maximizing MNEs that compete with each other, sharply deviate from the internalization choices ignoring such competition. Managerial SummaryWe present a game theory model of the effect of competition between multinational enterprises (MNEs) on their decisions whether to outsource or internalize production and marketing activities. Our model predicts that, at the presence of even modest knowledge transfer costs, such competition likely results in a monopoly outcome. The monopolistic MNE outsources production and builds on the resources that are freed due to this outsourcing to establish more research and development units and internalize marketing units. In addition, our model shows that when knowledge transfer costs are negligible, entry barrier reduce and more competitors arises. These competing MNEs will split markets between them in order to avoid direct competition, will have a greater propensity to outsource their marketing sites, and will need fewer marketing sites to control worldwide sales.

There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that those losing from globalization influence policy makers to decrease the openness of their countries to globalization, as evidenced by signing international trade and investment agreements.Surprisingly, this influence has never been examined empirically.This study provides novel empirical evidence demonstrating that greater within-country inequality, our proxy for 'perceived losses' from globalization, decreases countries' propensity to sign regional trade and investment agreements.Our findings support the argument that the existence of 'losers' from globalization can be detrimental for continued globalization.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first extensive econometric empirical evidence of the influence of within-country inequality on countries' willingness to sign international trade and investment agreements, as means to increase their global economic integration.