THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL NETWORKS: A NECESSARY

A long-standing view in the literature on international new ventures (INV) was that the liabilities of smallness, newness and foreignness that adhere to INVs were offset by some sort of ownership advantage, usually in the form of a superior product or technology (Zahra, 2005). More recent empirical work has demonstrated the existence of INVs in a wide range of industries, including traditional industries where hi-tech knowledge was not a factor (Knight, Bell, & McNaughton, 2001, Moen & Servais, 2002). This had led to a greater focus on the entrepreneur rather than the product as the driver of INV activity (Madsen & Servais, 1997). In this paper, we argue that the formation of a business network of stakeholders willing to commit resources to the INV is both a necessary and sufficient condition to justify the formation of an international new venture. We propose that international social competence and social astuteness are characteristics that encourage the development of these entrepreneurial networks. 2 The emergence of international new ventures (INVs), or born globals, has been one of the defining features of 21st century global capitalism (McKinsey & Company, 1993, Oviatt &amp