A chip off the old block: Founders' prior experience and the geographic diversification of export sales in international new ventures

Abstract

Integrating the cognition literature in entrepreneurship and strategy with the career imprinting literature, we propose that the geographic diversification of export sales in international new ventures (INVs) resembles that of their founders' most recent (geographically diversified) employer because founders bear a repertoire of the ‘logics of action’ from their employers regarding how to diversify geographically. We then propose two boundary conditions that influence the relationship between the geographic diversification of export sales of founders' most recent employers and that of their INVs: length of exposure and time since last exposure to their most recent geographically diversified employer. We test these hypotheses using longitudinal data on a sample of 3420 INVs. Our findings broadly support our theoretical propositions except for the moderating role of founders' length of exposure.