Expatriates' international opportunity recognition and innovativeness: The role of metacognitive and cognitive cultural intelligence

International opportunity recognition has become increasingly important in both the international business and international entrepreneurship fields. While previous international entrepreneurship research has suggested a wide variety of innovation-inducing factors, it has neglected the role of cross-cultural competences and the expatriate as a potential actor. Building on the experiential learning theory and a model of opportunity recognition, we argue how and why metacognitive and cognitive cultural intelligence are important cross-cultural competences that stimulate and enable expatriates to discover international opportunities and be innovative. We use a mixed method approach to analyze differences in the innovativeness of expatriates.