Accelerated internationalization
Accelerated internationalization is a novel feature of the global business economy, in both advanced and emerging economies (Schrader, Oviatt and McDougall 2001). Latecomers in particular internationalize very rapidly, by making use of prior international connections, leveraging their own expansion through making use of these – as in the case of expanding abroad as contractor to an existing multinational, or being carried by a global customer into new markets (Andersen, Blenker and Christensen 1997). It was as if these firms had executed a “gestalt switch” from domestic to global player – even if their actual pattern of internationalization was incremental. Thus they benefited from surprise in creating their global presence. A firm without this gestalt switch sees the international economy in terms of adding one As newcomers and latecomers, these firms had to find innovative ways to make space for themselves in markets that were already crowded with very capable firms.
Viewed in their own terms, the firms found new ways to complement the strategies of the incumbents, such as through offering contract services, through licensing new technologies, to forming joint ventures and strategic alliances. It is plausible that it was through the implementation of these complementary strategies that newcomers and latecomers were able to win a place in the emergent global economy, not on the basis of their existing strengths, but on the basis of their capacity to leverage resources from the strengths of others, through making international connections.
These internationalization strategies, designed to enhance firms’ resource base rather than to exploit existing assets, represent a fundamental departure in thinking by firms about what “globalizing” means and how it can be accomplished. It takes the firms beyond earlier stages of multinational expansion, characterized by what Perlmutter (1969) described as ethnocentric and polycentric management attitudes, straight to a geocentric strategic perspective. This turns out to be an advantage of being a latecomer or newcomer.
Source: Andrea Goldstein
OECD Development Centre
2, rue André Pascal
75775 Paris Cedex 16
France
Federico Bonaglia
OECD Development Centre
2, rue André Pascal
75775 Paris Cedex 16
France
John Mathews
Macquarie Graduate School of Management
Sydney NSW 2109
Australia
