Born-globals vs. Born-graduals: An Exploratory Study of the Internationalization Patterns of Successful Slovak Firms

The book aims is to collect information and provide detailed qualitative analysis on the internationalization patterns of successfully internationalized, privately owned Slovak firms founded after 1990 and test the applicability of the existing well-known internationalization theories in order to explain the internationalization patterns of Slovak multinationals. In search for potential differences in internationalization patterns, a representative group of Slovak firms with slow and fast internationalization processes spread over different industries is identified and analyzed. The results show the importance of achieving the combination of the entrepreneurial behavior, business/personal networks and firm-specific resources & capabilities for the successful internationalization of privately owned firms emerging from such a small market economy as Slovakia. Additionally, the findings show that the most applicable theories to explain the internationalization processes of the selected firms include a combination of the network view and the resource-based view, irrespective of the speed of internationalization. In addition, four firms were identified as hidden champions.