The impact of different kinds of knowledge for the internationalization process of Born Globals in the biotech business

This study explores how different kinds of knowledge of founders and managers at Born Globals are related to the firms’ discovery and exploitation of foreign market opportunities. Based on data from eight biotech Born Globals, we dichotomized Born Globals into two subsets: Born Industrials and Born Academics. The study shows that the founders’ and managers’ different combinations of technological and international knowledge impact the firms’ proactive or reactive behavior in discovering foreign market opportunities. The results indicate that different kinds of Born Globals follow different internationalization processes and that Born Globals, therefore, should not be analyzed as a homogenous group, which has been the common perspective in previous research.