Building a foreign sales base: the roles of capabilities and alliances for entrepreneurial firms

This study examines how technological capabilities and international collaborative linkages affect entrepreneurial firms' abilities to build a foreign sales base in a highly competitive global industry. The empirical evidence from a sample of North American semiconductor firms indicates that both technological capabilities and international collaboration potentially aid firms' development of foreign sales. Our results also provide initial evidence that the influence of technological capabilities and international alliances differs across entrepreneurial and established firms. The paper argues that these differences are due to the dissimilar strategies and resource characteristics of entrepreneurial and established firms. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Inc.