The international entrepreneur – From experience to action

Abstract

Although already early works in the international entrepreneurship area such as Oviatt and McDougall ( 1994 ), Knight and Cavusgil ( 1996 ), and Madsen and Servais ( 1997 ) acknowledge the importance of the entrepreneur, other factors than the entrepreneur himself/herself have been dominant in international entrepreneurship research. One reason for the exclusion of the entrepreneur in many studies might be that some of the definitions of international entrepreneurship do not focus on the individual entrepreneur. For example, one of the most frequently used definitions of international entrepreneurship is: “international entrepreneurship is a combination of innovative, proactive, and risk-seeking behavior that crosses national borders and is intended to create value in organizations” (McDougall and Oviatt, 2000 , p. 903). This definition is heavily influenced by Covin and Slevin ( 1989 ) and does not explicitly focus on the individual entrepreneurs within a firm but on entrepreneurial behavior at company level.