Entrepreneurs' behavioural skills for internationalization

Internationalization is an essential strategic choice for firm growth, a multidimensional process by which small and medium size firms can broaden their customer base, attain larger production volumes and leverage resources in different markets. Usually for SME’s it is a challenging process in which a wide range of decisions have to be taken. The entrepreneur, as decision-maker, is considered a principal force in the development, implementation, sustenance, and success of a firm's international strategies and the central factor explaining a firm's international behavior. Literature on the characteristics of entrepreneurs as successful drivers of internationalilzation focused mainly on tangible aspects of human capital such as their previous experiences abroad, which could generate better knowledge of foreign markets and their educational level. However, no attention has been paid on those intangible aspects of human capital, namely behavioural competencies, which have been recognized by literature as key predictors of personal and professional success, and may have an impact on the entrepreneur’s ability to find and take advantage of international opportunities. Previous studies highlighted that risk taking and initiative are two important characteristics that help the entrepreneur undertake internationalization processes, but did not investigate other types of behavioural skills. Our study wants to address this gap by investigating what behavioural elements which characterize entrepreneurs positively impact on the firm’s internalization. To do so, we carried out a study on a sample of 39 innovative Italian companies which belong to different sectors and show different levels of internationalization. The aim of this paper is to add to the previous literature on entrepreneurship and interationalization by identifying new antecedents of the firm’s level of interationalization adopting an individual level prospective, and to understand what are the behavioural competencies that have a positive impact on the successful implementation of intarnationalization processes and could be developed by entrepreneurs in order to strengthen their ability to expand their business beyond the national borders.