Knowledge acquisition and the foreign development of high-tech start-ups: A social capital approach

In this paper, we use social capital theory to discuss the growth of “international new ventures”, aiming to verify whether or not social capital may be considered as a critical source of knowledge acquisition abroad. We analyse social capital embedded in vertical relationships between global high-tech start-ups and their largest single foreign customer. Our findings confirm that while the structural dimension of social capital is positively associated with greater knowledge acquisition, both relational and cognitive dimensions are negatively linked to knowledge acquisition.