Research advises early global focus

COMPANIES IN emerging markets that go global early after their establishment significantly outperform later internationalisers.
This is according to new research from the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB), which found that international sales intensity among new ventures that internationalise early is more than twice that of those who do so later in their life cycle.
The research examined 343 owner-managed firms from China, India, Mexico, and South Africa (of these 47.5% qualified as international new ventures). These companies were drawn from five traditional manufacturing and seven knowledge-intensive industries.
“This was the first significant in-depth research on entry timing and subsequent performance of new ventures from emerging markets,” said Eric Wood, Liberty Life Professor of Entrepreneurship at the UCT GSB and one of the authors of the research.