Native and International Entrepreneurship

Abstract

A new anatomy of the entrepreneurial body is emerging with increased mobility of people who travel, visit, study, or work without restraint outside their native countries. Moreover, the Internet-mediated economy facilitates personal ties and continued access to one’s home culture. Physical proximity is, therefore, no longer the most important factor in discouraging networking on a world scale.

Mobility across borders and novel scientific-technological capabilities are driving a transition from the traditional form of entrepreneurship (we call it “native entrepreneurship,” to typify the locally oriented and static behavior of the entrepreneurial context) organized along lines of geographical proximity and cultural identity to a new form called international entrepreneurship, which is one of the most visible manifestations of a process of cultural integration that happens through a global spread of ideas.

Native entrepreneurship resembles an island whose borders are dictated by the natural barriers of its physical space. What is more, the proximity effect creates other types of barriers – those raised by family favoritism, crony capitalism, ethnic, racial or religious factionalism, which have oftentimes prevented native new ventures from succeeding.