تاثیر چابکی بر عملکرد بازار شرکت های نوظهور در جهان: یک مطالعه اکتشافی از خوشه نوآوری Tech City The impact of agility on the market performance of born-global firms: An exploratory study of the ‘Tech City’ innovation cluster

1. Introduction Changes within the global business environment have presented SMEs with more opportunities to access the international marketplace (Gabrielsson, Kirpalani, Dimitratos, Solberg, & Zucchella, 2008; Patel, Fernhaber, McDougall-Covin, & van der Have, 2014). As a result, companies that operate internationally soon after their inception (‘born-globals’) are emerging in substantial numbers worldwide. Scholars have provided different definitions of born-globals (BGs) in terms of speed and scope of internationalization; however, the majority agree that BG firms are those that start internationalization within three years of their domestic establishment and derive at least 25% of sales from international markets (e.g. Knight & Cavusgil, 2004; Kuivalainen, Saarenketo, & Puumalainen, 2012; Madsen, 2013). Although BG firms have been a focus of attention for about two decades (since the work of Oviatt & McDougall, 1994) there is still a lack of research that examines the drivers of their superior international performance. Being early adopters of internationalization, BGs face multiple challenges in the international environment (Freeman, Hutchings, Lazaris, & Zyngier, 2010). To maximize their performance, the decision-making of BG firms has to be aligned with their external conditions. However, to maintain an alignment with today’s dynamic global marketplace and not to become a victim of its uncertainty, BGs not only have to respond to environmental changes but also have to be able to proactively drive the external environment, through being agile (Griffith & Hoppner, 2013). ‘Agility’ has been defined as the ability to detect market opportunities and take advantage of them with speed and surprise (Cegarra-Navarro, Soto-Acosta, & Wensley, 2016; Sambamurthy, Bharadwaj, & Grover, 2003). Most research has focused on the ability of firms to minimize the uncertainties in the external environment rather than on an ability to contribute to market volatility through speedy and surprising market solutions. BGs provide an especially appropriate context for such research, as they operate under challenging conditions – when the environment is highly uncertain, windows of opportunity are short-lived and limited resources are at hand (Weerawardena, Mort, Liesch, & Knight, 2007). Little is known about the ability of BGs to become agile and under what internal conditions agility can lead to better performance. We respond to this gap in the literature by developing a conceptual framework based on a literature review and an exploratory qualitative study of BG companies in Tech City in London, UK.