International new ventures: The cross-border nexus of individuals and opportunities

We draw on entrepreneurship research to present a framework for international new ventures as the cross-border nexus of individuals and opportunities. Opportunities may be associated with cross-border combinations of resources and/or markets and therefore vary along these two dimensions. This framework accounts for the emergence of firms whose very existence stems from opportunities to engage in the cross-border combination of resources and/or markets. This perspective has important implications for whether internationalization follows competitive advantage or vice versa and also helps explain how the identification and exploitation of opportunities to create international new ventures may contribute to economic development. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.