Success Factors of International New Venture Firms - Empirical Case Study of German SME

IntroductionIn contrast to traditional internationalization concepts, recent research outcomes within international business (IB) discipline, emphasize that firms start venturing internationally soon after inception. In the early 1990's, Michael W. Rennie discovered the emergence of such entities within a case study of 300 Australian start-ups, which entered foreign markets straight after foundation. Rennie called this type of firms 'born globals' (Rennie, 1993, pp. 45-52). Since then, the internationalization business process literature has been expanded by several authors, who picked up Rennie's study outcomes. Meanwhile, literature on the born global phenomenon has been amplified by research of other industries and regions outside Australia. Especially, small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) which operate in international markets from the early beginning of the firm lifetime raised the interest of scholars (Knight, Cavusgil, 1996, pp. 11-26).In 1994, Benjamin M. Oviatt and Patricia P. McDougall formulated their theory of "international new ventures" (Oviatt, McDougall, 1994, pp. 45-64) (INVs). The concept explicitly raised attention among the scholarly society because a more comprehensive understanding of the 'new venture phenomenon' was provided. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the current literature lacks a uniform definition of an INV. The paper on hand attempts to summarize research contributions which target a common description and classification of an INV. The value of these theoretical approaches is verified in a case study of a German SME which serves as an ideal INV candidate.1. MethodologyThe first part of the paper is devoted to a literature review on newly upcoming internationalization theories. The research was conducted by scanning bibliographic database sources such as "WISO", "Science Direct" and "SpringerLink". Key words such as 'international new venture', 'born global', 'international entrepreneurship', and 'internationalization process' helped to discover relevant articles in ranked journal publications. Aware of the fact that major research on INVs started in the early 1990's there was no time limitation set concerning the release of publication. The empirical part of this paper is structured in a similar pattern as introduced by Rialp et al. in 2005 for four Spanish firm case studies (Rialp, Rialp, Knight, 2005, pp. 133-171).As a first step, the authors have searched for a SME firm which fits to the theoretical definitions of an INV (Oviatt, McDougall, 1994, p. 49). Potential firm candidates were collected through the German association of machine ma- nufactures ("Verband Deutscher Maschinen und Anlagenbauer"). As a second step, following the evaluation of relevant data such as firm history, international business activities etc. one suitable firm was selected for the case study.As a third step, a face-to-face interview (around 120 minutes) with the founder and entrepreneur was carried out in German language and the results translated into English. Additional information material and business performance figures of the case study firm were provided by the founder and contributed to the empirical part of this article.Finally, at the end of this article, in light of the case study research results, the authors investigate the value of current theoretical literature contributions which target a uniform classification of an INV.2. International new venture conceptsFirms, that venture internationally straight after their inception are differently named in the corresponding literature: innate and adoptive exporters (Granitsky, 1989, pp. 50-62), born internationals (Ray, 1989), subsequently infant multinationals (Lindqvist, 1991), high-technology start-ups (Jolly, Alahuhta, Jwannet, 1992, pp. 71-82), global start-ups (Oviatt, McDougall, 1995, pp. 71-82) instant internationals (Litvak, 1990, pp. 7-12), international entrepreneurs (Jones, 1999, pp. …