Accelerated Internationalization in Emerging Markets: Empirical Evidence from Brazilian Technology-Based Firms

This article investigates the external factors driving the accelerated internationalization of technology-based firms (TBFs) in the context of an emerging market, Brazil. This type of firm is typically called born global and has been reported mainly in the high-technology sectors and from the developed countries. Our research is survey-based, and a questionnaire was applied to the small and medium Brazilian TBFs. Logistic regression was used to test the research hypotheses. The results suggest that the new and small Brazilian technology-based firms, which followed an accelerated internationalization process, are most likely to be integrated into a global production chain. The results also indicate that the TBFs that take more than 5 years to enter the international market benefit more from the location in an innovation habitat, the partnerships in the home country, and the pro-internationalization government policies. Therefore, this research contributes to a better understanding of the phenomenon and points to new perspectives for future studies on TBFs from emerging markets.